from Josephine Quarterly:
from Sho Poetry Journal:
QUEER ADOLESCENCE AT 41
To need to give external form to every single one of your ideas as soon as it enters your head
To have a body
To be exposed and found to be inadequate
To know what desire is, its violence and certainty, how it makes every humiliation irrelevant
To be a real girl, feral, ferocious, a dagger slicing through the veil
To do something you’ve never done before (giving head to a girl on the first date, say) and know that you must find a way to make this activity central to your life
To be exposed and found to be perfect
To fall in love with her just because she wears a man’s belt that you get to unclasp and she has long blonde hair that you get to grab in your fist
To overcome insecurity with dark humor and slutty clothes and aggression
To say all the wrong things in front of your crush and then go home to your daughter who hands you a piece of paper that says BEST MOMMY EVER
To hear every song on the radio as if it’s a physical portal leading to a physical temple where you get to be your true self without doing anything at all
To imagine the shape and texture of the breasts of every woman you meet, how she likes to be touched, what sounds she makes when she comes
To cry to the point of dehydration
To laugh to the point of tears at every single thing a new friend says about being divorced, being single, being gay, being alive
To feel the sun on your face like the hand of a woman on your inner thigh
To live out one of your core fantasies (picking up a hot slut at a bar, say, and going home with her and giving her exquisite pleasure all night and then a calm kiss goodbye in the morning) and be so full of the thrill for days afterward that you are hyper-productive, superhuman, capable of perfectly accomplishing every task that life throws at you
To hate your parents
To know exactly what you want out of life and be terrifed that you won’t get it
To connect with people more intimately than you ever have before, to be understood more deeply than you ever have before, and then to feel—after a brief interaction with a near stranger in which you don’t connect, you’re not understood—annihilated, dead inside, entirely hopeless about your prospects for love
To believe that the tiny speck of dust you are in the world has great meaning
To be in awe that you get to discover this meaning and live it out
To splinter every shiny, new moment against the immutable fact that you are 41 and not 17. And all the painful, preventable experiences you’ve had with men can never be erased. And your children will never have two moms. And you can never go back to the lonely child you were and tell her it’s okay to feel everything without making sense of it, without getting it right, without being scared straight that this is her only chance to live.