Sometimes my mother tells me she does not know who I am anymore
and I get lost trying to explain where all this change is coming from
so I trace the unfamiliar lines of my body back
to the cracked pink bathroom tile in my childhood home,
the sink I gripped with both hands while I trembled
over the toilet seat trying to piss standing up.
Maybe it started before those juvenile attempts at manhood, on our drought-stricken yard,
my brothers’ bodies yielding small dust devils when they tossed each other in the dirt
playing tackle football, sweat-slick skin scratched raw and shining,
the envious, uncut torso beneath my shirt swelling up and down
with a prideful puff when my brother said, Keep it on. Someone might see.
I have yet to understand the dirty process of becoming.
Maybe it started when my brothers ran inside with split knees and bruised shins
and stains on torn jeans—and I’m still not sure how, but back then, I just knew—
I wanted to learn to ride a bike so I could ram its sparkly blue frame
through the garden gate separating me from tackle football and broken noses.
I wanted to feel the impact shock in my bones, hurtle myself toward the ground,
hear the fluid-crack of joints slamming into concrete,
to unravel my skin like thread, press grass scratches into my palms,
feel the crushing death embrace of another boy.
