If the Body is a Metaphor

If the body is a metaphor

I fear

mine has been mistranslated,

conjugated by a mouth

that grew up chewing

a different syntax. Maybe

it was supposed to be a superlative

for this is how to adore

something less fleeting. Or

maybe it was supposed to be an imperative

bruised out through the hole of my mother’s

screaming.

Or maybe I was supposed to be passed on

from one mouth to another

evolving with each rumor

that sustains me.

I want someone to give me a kiss

I can hold on to

for later when I need one,

for when my body grows

conjunctive

between the female and male phrases, belonging

to both, and neither, at once.

I would kiss you just to comma the moment

but I don’t know where my mouth has been.

At night, I lie awake

even in my sleep.

Tonight, my jaw feels

mispronounced—

I forgot to shave my face

and now I can’t stop touching the quotations

fuzzing my cheeks

until a period burrows through my gut like teeth.

What if my body is actually trying to ask you

not to make me an asterisk

in a text about anything human?

I am a female man

but I am not a footnote

that will lie down

silently.

I am pregnant

five minutes ago, will be for the past eleven weeks,

but I can’t leave my context.

I lie here, twisting among sheets, and bleed

right through the page.

I know I should end the poem here, but

I have a right to be saved.

Yet, so long as I freeze the moment,

I am still pregnant

-ish. And

I don’t want to be past tense—

not when I could be present

and also full of the future.

This poem was a finalist in the Pleiades Poetry Prize and was published in Pleiades, Spring 2022