glinting in their seats. I missed you like
a catastrophe misses its own announcement.
In the Goodwill, we shopped for an armchair.
Your mother smoked the wallpaper off the walls.
A rose isn’t a rose—has never been a rose.
Plastic forks curled in the heat of the fridge.
Cut the opening right here where there used to
be a promise. I am a tunicate preventing the poison
from rushing in. A snake surfaces on your
Disney-land face. What wouldn’t I give for
pleasure? If only this day could yield me nothing
but nothing. An afternoon in college spent
cradling mugs and saying “this would be
a nice urn.” Placing little hopes in spoons
and carrying them in our mouths. You sleep
like only stones know how to. I wake up
before the sun glimpses herself in the water.
My chromosomes waltz like good heterosexuals.
I had a shadow-self once and then I became him.
I chipped a tooth and it did the impossible—
it grew back only green and wild this time.
I eat whatever asks to be eaten. A doorbell
belonging to no entrance, rings Welcome.
Robin Gow is a trans and queer poet and Young Adult author from living in rural Pennsylvania. They are the author of Our Lady of Perpetual Degeneracy (Tolsun Books, 2020). TWITTER & INSTAGRAM
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