girl boy

i was born into a pattern:
a perfect order
of girl-boy-girl-boy,
all two years apart,
patterns of colours, clothes, talk, and toys,
a neat system of clits and cocks,
spread out between my siblings and i.

/ tell me, do you see my clit? do you see my cock? /

i grew into patterns
of fights, football, bikes and trees,
of primary school boy-gangs and girl-gangs,
of all-year-round shorts and t-shirts,
bare feet on the grass and stones,
and stony silence when there was anger
and violence in the kitchen, on the stairs,
and closing inside to find small spaces of safety,
where there was quiet.

/ tell me, do you hear my quiet? /

i grew into patterns
of girl-boy-girl-boy,
now here, now there,
now short-long hair,
now boy-talk about girls
and menstrual blood and masturbation,
with six-pack competitions and
making fun of each other,
proving our place;
now girl-talk about boys
and bras, shaving and lotion,
me desperately trying to work out their rules,
and taking showers together after high-school sport,
where we all kept our underwear on,
because this was England.

i grew into dancing with my hips
for the constant male gaze,
into skating and breakdance in baggy pants,
taking on the male gaze,
into jumps and splits in a growing maze
of inside-outside, this side, that side,
not sure where i belong,
trying to decide,
and a tendency to drift
into corners and distance
when i wasn't sure.

/ tell me, do you see my gaze? /

i grew into other peoples' patterns,
their rules, their desires, my second guesses,
falling
into their ways
of girl-boy-girl-boy:
now 'masculine' and proud of it,
but not too much, not too butch,
stay soft around the edges;
now 'feminine': just try it on,
this side that's been neglected.
so despite trying to dare, trying not to care,
falling
from one person to another,
never landing in between,
shifting out of myself
to fit something safe,
falling into social patterns
that keep the genders clean.
you see, the idea of rejection or disapproval
still made those small parts of me afraid.

/ but tell me, is falling safe? /

i grew into falling,
until i couldn't stand
the twists and splits in my only me,
couldn't think or feel or breathe:
lost in other people's space.

i grew into my clit-cock-muscles-tits,
my butch-fem, sub-dom,
to and from the other side,
where there is no other, no side,
no pride, no shame,
just a human, being, moving, breathing,
with short-long hair on my head
with hair in my pits and on my legs
with the muscles i always wanted,
arms packed, abs tight,
not trying to be nice,
with a wide stance, leaning back as i talk,
and a definite swagger, eyes high as i walk,
with men's underwear and shower gel -
which after all is just a smell -
and with clothing picked from both sides
of your precious gender divide.
and since i embraced what people might read
as my masculinity,
since i stopped trying to prove it
and just let it shine through,
well my feminine sits more easily,
as if maybe i'm just quite a camp guy
or maybe it's different every day.

and sometimes people call me sir
or sir and then madam
or stop halfway through
don't know what to say at all
and sometimes it's funny
like the whole thing's a game
and sometimes the confusion on their faces
is like a quietly creeping shame
that crawls under my skin
and I want to explain
that some boxes are too limiting
that none of it has to matter
it's all up for grabs

see, i grew out of your patterns,
a silent blaze of fuck your rules, i don't want to play.
this girl-boy split doesn't fit my skin,
doesn't fit the subtlety of a human, being,
who isn't a computer code, a set of binaries,
of ones and zeros, zero, one, zero, one, out to infinity. please.
the one is the zero, is neither, and both.
the patterns are see-though and solid, are split and whole.

i'll keep growing, into a human: being, doing, dreaming,
with my own desires, my own daring,
my own calm, and caring,
my ideas and energy,
my perception, imagination,
my own power on my own two feet.

/ i see your patterns, but don't put them on me. /