titles of unpublished (or unwritten) blog posts

• of all the tigers I have seen

• only a psychopath

• an actual flannel shirt

• sunflowers: how someone could hate a thing for dying

• astounding: a dialogue

• nyquil

• untimely nostalgia: hope, codependency, & the end of moonbeams

• apple: a dialogue

• grace

• records of a human phonebook

• the patriarchy & victoria's secret

• ting ting & the tilapia

• subliminal (a list of casually violently homophobic things that I have heard, and laughed at nervously)

• reasons for punching

• spring fling foresight

• whale aftermath

• to all the old men who have winked at me, as if expecting some sort of response

• lockdown [pt. 2]

• if you give a mormon coffee

• crying about rocks

gender & giraffes (or, why you shouldn't lie to kids, ever)

My youngest sister Saraiah is four years old.

On father's day, my stepdad took his son to a race track, leaving my mother, sisters, and myself to do whatever we wanted.

"Today's an all girls day," my mom told Saraiah. "It's just you and me and Selah and Shady!"

"Shady is not a girl," Saraiah responded emphatically. "Her's a boy!"

My mother was baffled. "...Why would you say that?"

Saraiah sighed angrily and folded her arms. "Because she is as tall as a giraffe, and giraffes are all boys!"

Our mother reasoned with her about how both boy and girl giraffes have to exist for the species to survive, and how Shady is neither of them, because she is a human, and then she pulled out her anatomy and physiology textbook and explained what made a boy and a girl, because that's who my mother is. Saraiah remained skeptical.

When she told me this happened, I laughed for a while, and then remembered a day about ten months earlier when I had told Saraiah I was a boy -- partly just to mess with her, and partly to see what she would do. She frowned, and said, "You not a girl?

"No."

"But I still a girl."

"Yes, you're still a girl."

Then she moved on and, as I had believed, promptly forgot the whole conversation.

At first we all thought she was just being silly, and would adjust easily to the new information regarding my gender, but throughout the day she would continue to bring it up, making sure. Even for weeks afterward.

We'd be lying in my bed, which she sleeps in since she's scared of the dark, and she'd be playing with my hair and then whisper softly, "Shady?"

"What?"

"You a girl."

"Yes."

Or while we're playing with my dog, "Shady? Calley's a girl. Her's a girl, right?"

"Yeah, she is."

"And you a girl!"

"Yes!"

"And me!"

"Yes!"

After all these conversations one would assume it would be enough.

But one day, we had a small family over for spaghetti and bread.

Half of my family is allergic to gluten: my mother and sisters. Whenever we do get supermarket bread -- a rare delicacy -- only my stepdad, brother, and myself eat it. On this day, one of the other little girls at the table picked up a piece of bread, and Saraiah gasped. "Mom!! Her's is eating wheat!"

"Saraiah it's okay, she's not allergic."

"But her's a girl!!"

I sighed, exasperated. "Saraiah, I'm a girl!"

Saraiah's eyes widened, fork held tightly in hand. She looked around the table, at the two separate pots of noodles, at the plates, at the faces of our guests. You could see how hard she was trying to understand.

I realized then what made it such a problem. If I was four years old, I would definitely categorize my family with my mother and sister on one side, and my dad, brother, and Shady on the other. It made perfect sense as a social binary. We all eat wheat. We're all tall. We all have slightly lower voices, all wear baggy pants and button-down shirts. None of us wear jewelry.


I had been debating whether or not to cut my hair off, but then realized at that moment, watching my sister try desperately to understand the world around her, it would only make Saraiah's life that much harder.

perry

An urban legend.

back

Young girls, middle school girls, matching patriotic bikini tops. They are slouching, nervous, happy, yet to understand the mystical qualities of the shadows under their own shoulder blades of which they cannot see. Skin stretched over spines, told too skinny by their mothers, browning in the sun above the amusement park.

And boys, boys who travel in herds, remove their shirts in herds, swing them over their shoulders in herds, hair short and wet, eyes grinning. Backs straight and tall, lean and proud, some flexing uncomfortably as they approach the backs of girls.

And the backs of children, in the backseat with the windows down. Children running towards the water rides unsupervised, all ribs and spines and healthy hunger, hunger which cannot be filled with the food stamps keeping them alive. Hunger to run and chase and catch and throw, to laugh and cry and shout and scream, to bend backwards, to break bones.

The backs of pennies in a dirty fountain, backwards wishes in the water where a dead bird floats where birds do not belong.

Nine years old and the boys stand up straighter and the girls slouch shorter; the boys get louder, the girls get softer; and you notice the backs of them in the crowds, watch the gradual realization of bodies, the gradual stretching of spines.

From the back of the line, backs of men beneath t shirts, some soft and padded, muscled and slouching under the weight of family backpacks. Backs of girls in crop tops, above the hems of faded jean shorts, soft and dimpled and they know what they're doing though they know not what will be done. Backs of women, seemingly burdened, shirts that hug the skin and bra straps of infinite variety all consistently more interesting colors than the clothes that cover them.

And all of them move to the front of the line, and all of them lean back in their seats, and you are looking at your shoes, looking for something you want to have back, something you left here in middle school. Something in the scaffolding, something in the framework, something in the chipping paint. And you're waiting, searching for words abandoned in this place, words of great significance, and you want them back somehow. You want them back.

Backs of hands lifted in the swirling blue sky, screams tossed backwards and hurled into the air behind, you want them back, you want them back, you want them back.

Backs of nickels, backs of dimes, backs of quarters collected at the bottom as the bird is fished from the surface of the water, floating on its back. The wishes are more expensive these days. You wonder how much they all add up to. You wonder how many came true.

You wonder how many wishes were never asked for, lying on your belly in the grass during the homecoming picnic last year. Unnoticed freckles on your back. Unnoticed beauty on the undersides of leaves dancing above you, everything backwards, everything wrong, everything alive and holy.

And you want that wish back like the bird wants its life back.

Everything alive and holy.