Doing Yoga, I Think About Simone Biles And My Nonbinary Child
Despite how easily my body, once picked last
for every gym-class team, now settles into headstand,
I can’t imagine how it feels to leap beyond
the laws of physics, but I know the mantra
“must be perfect” – two thick hands around the throat.
Does any moment matter to the body
except the present? Simone tries to give
words to her body’s refusal. My kid tries to explain
not feeling that “the word ‘female’ fits,” her conversation
sharp with offhand references to top surgery
and the dysphoria of trans boys when they bleed.
Half of America’s enraged that we lost gold.
I’m a mother. Like a rabid sports fan,
I know what it’s like to fasten dreams
to someone’s else’s flesh. Am I allowed
to say I miss my girl? Biles got the Twisties,
which sounds like the side-effect
of a fun drug or a brightly-dressed band
that plays children’s songs, but actually means
that a gymnast gets disoriented, not sure
where they are and what they must do next
to bring them upright
in the suddenly strange and dangerous air.
xxx
Media Tells Me to Have a “Hot Girl Summer”
How to live inside a woman’s body
is a trick I’ve never mastered,
moments of joy, certainly, safety, yes
but never lasting. Always the next
threat, arriving reliably as carnival ducks
in a row. Fame and beauty are imperfect tools.
Ask Britney. She’s a sad doll, owned
and taken out to put on shows. The clouds
are entertainers, too, shape shifting
as I bob on a board in lazy waves,
hoping to absorb secrets the ocean knows.
Back on the sand, my daughters are blossoming, taut
and laughing in bikinis. Newly-divorced,
my friend’s lost as a wave freed from the moon.
Tuesday my other friend will lose
her uterus and what will fill the empty space?
In all of us, a space unfillable
and made no smaller by naming.
Hit Me Baby One More Time’s
repeating in my head.
Seaweed wraps around my ankle like the future.