From the moment I became aware that I recycle myself,
I feared what that meant for selfhood.
I had already spent enough years feeling like the bounty
of my form was trying to abort itself.
Now confirmed: the young was being pushed out
for younger. Every cell was born with a goal and deadline
and rapid maturation indicated that womanhood
was innate, which is to say out of my control.
Already a failure of the thing I was meant to be,
it made sense for the natural cycle of bushfires
to be my punishment. Destruction and regeneration; a reminder
coming back, and like the scruffy hair of shaved legs, back again.
Enough years passed where fat and hair and scabbing
clots of blood mount themselves in a rush
to be severed from the host
that the transgression is out of my control.
I dedicate the fall of zippers in disappointment in dressing rooms
to the forms that have tried to hold me and failed.
I gave up on the beauty I was prescribed to reach.
If there are little deaths within me,
every day, at least let me feel them.
