By Alix Perry
Yes, I have been sweeping my floors
with a sharp knife, all hands and knees and
clammy patience of perfection. Here and here
and here and here, smudges and ridges
I smooth over. Okay? I would never remake
myself for you, but the world—
I know this place has taught you not to trust
yourself. I know all these yearsyouwe never
truly stopped. Resistance in the crooks of our
elbows and smalls of our backs, the stuff collecting
under our nails as we graze each other’s skin.
I imagine myself as a child speaking to you,
sandpaper teen, your friends pointing and
laughing at my hope. There’s a lawn bubble,
grassy waterbed, forming near the playground
that day. I cartwheel toward it, my best/only
plan of persuasion. Fry-hungry gulls screeching
out the name that isn’t yet mine, windbreak
trees taking on clockwork in the distance, farm field
mud threatening centripetal ooze. When I turn
around, I’m too dizzy, can’t see if you’ve followed.
Still callow enough—then and now—to suspect
you hear the same sounds in the sky.
Ever more polished, my floors becoming slick.
The couch drifts with the slightest nudge, the bed
in a new position every time we wake. We can’t
wear socks, then can’t walk at all. We slide around
on our bellies like penguins, fingers interlaced,
knuckles forgetting their former allegiances.
Out of nearly nowhere is fear, believing I’ve ridden
an irreparable urge. You take up the blade with
a new grip, start scratching a frictive path through.
We come into life craving what we cannot name.
Slow, the way we learn to ask and find. I watch
your younger self watch my younger self try
lawn bubble trampoline, ripples on the surface,
soil seal still awaiting rupture. I hold onto things by
their rhythms: phone numbers, changing of
the seasons, your breath in the moments between
waking and sleep. Up from the soles of my feet,
this broken-pipe pulse. Lets me know where to linger.
Here and here
and here and here.
Okay?
Your younger self, already the condensed eloquence
in that smile, it’s like a memory, the soggy ground
sinking how it shouldn’t under you, you apparition.
Alix Perry is a trans writer from the Pacific Northwest. When not playing with words, they can be found rambling outdoors, obsessively listening to their new favorite album, and/or riding a train. Their work has been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and has been (or will be) featured in beestung, The B’K, The Shore, and elsewhere. Their poetry chapbook, Tomatoes Beverly, is forthcoming with Querencia Press. Find out more and sign up for their newsletter at alixperrywriting.com.
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