nomono

I’ve been saying who I was
since I was two years old
and one imaginary friend
wasn’t enough
by eleven I’d created entire casts
of characters, including the triplets who
raced bicycles down gravel Kentucky alleyways
and fought over affections and attention and time
and I suppose that weekend in Nebraska where
I held one boys hand while another rubbed circles into the
soft space around the ball joint of my foot all under the same blanket
could have been an announcement or an acceptance that
this is who I was

there has never been a love container big enough to
control or enfold the ways I spill and shake into
relationships or out of molds I do not
think I was wrong when I wrote a blog post
in oh-one for the boy whose fingers reminded me
I was a woman when I was
still a girl and talked about how marriage was
a sham or substance or sustenance for people who
were too afraid to look their own neediness in the eye
shake it by the shoulders or tongue thrust into thirsty lips
on international kissing day
which is a thing I knew should exist before I knew it existed