LGBTQ+ Poem: Identity, with Gender, by Emily Antrilli

I guess I’ve never felt like a woman
or a woman-shaped something stuffed
with satin daisies and surrounded by soft
flaps of labia cupping the outside like a
body bag or maybe I guess I’ve never
really felt like a wo-man or a hu-man or
any word suffixed by man

I’ve felt what alone sounds like a small
child five or six crouched knees on the
sidewalk of the motel waiting for Mother
to return I noticed an open numbered door
and an infant two or three months crying
on the rung mattress against the wall

I’ve felt what weight may mean an adult
eighteen or nineteen and a man pointing to
the blood I left on his dorm mattress and my
eyes unable to notice a color other than
the heavy coated red

I’ve felt what beautiful could mean whenever
I’m alone and I can hear less people asking
for me to pay attention I can close my eyes and
picture myself a puddle or a cat or a bowl
that you could put the nicest things into

And I guess a bowl or a cat or a puddle
could all be vaginas or vagina shaped things
wet things or new things or things
very alone but what I see inside
is a thing I can’t trace and a wetness that feels
sticky heavy bears red blood tears of infants
alone

I guess I’ve never really felt like a woman or
a person connected to the humps of my body or
thickness of my blood I often wish to be
a cerulean insect whose iridescent wings
glow red only in the peak of light and whose
lifespan is only long enough to learn
what together feels like