Gretchen Rockwell

I wear citrine, jeans, men's oxfords. I am not 

binding today, and I cannot decide if that makes me 

self-conscious or not. I wait for my name to be 

called, its rough consonants cutting the air.

I am, I know, entering a world where my options 

are sir and ma’am, and I won’t get sir-ed, so—

I consider my body and its curves: different enough 

to be off-putting if you don’t understand what it’s saying, 

not different enough to be perceived correctly. I always 

turn my face into the sun, resist the moon. I want 

to be the endless void of a black hole, or static 

crackling through space’s emptiness. Eventually

I will stop using other eyes to see who I am.