Gender Mirror

The other night when we were alone, dark haired beautiful girl,
You and I, slender faced beautiful woman
On your bed, timid, cautious, gentle beautiful girl
In your room
I held you until you cried
I don’t know if you cried because you knew you were safe
Or because you never realized you had been before
I held you because I needed to feel safe
I often forget that these arms with which I hold you are the arms of a man, a male, xy recessive
There is something in me instinctively so
But acculturation has erased the cultural aberration of modern masculinity
I’ve been dis-acculturated from the valences of paternalism
The fag flag rubbing clear the marks of maleness upon my consciousness
Supposedly resolving me, absolving me of gender-biases
But lying with you, I know myself male
And not simply male as when you are male
But male to your femaleness
My back to you read as rejection, yours to me as invitation
I hold you
I feel in my arms the cultural weight and duty of the protector, desiring to make you safe and knowing in your safety to find my own
Where boys do not know the path to emotional openness they follow your footsteps and slip through the gate behind
There is openness in these fields for both shepherd and sheep
Do not let me lose sight of you for then am I lost, too
But in this moment
Lying beside you, silent, breathing into the nape of your neck, your hair sweet on the pillow my hands rough filling the concavity of your side
I know myself darker
When you are man you have right to my body as I to yours
When you are man there is familiarity to these lines, this softness, that forgetfulness
When you are man I reflect myself into you with ease and look to please myself
But in this body there is disfamiliarity
I exoticize because I do not know
Your heart between my arms is lost behind softness unfamiliar your hips giving way to constellations in skies I’ve not seen
I don’t know what it means to feel you there
I don’t know what it means to breathe
And in the not-knowing search for pleasure there is only my own
And I seek to fill it in you
My hands upon your body, exploring
There is landfall, discovery and inherent ownership
This is not childhood adventuring but conquest
The height of each tip flying flags
The curves nestling settlements of safety returned
My hands deep within you, I find myself home
There is space in you to give first right of betrothal
I am your manor keeper
It is not you that I dispossess
Lying beside you I suddenly know why men rape

There is privilege in these hands that takes offense at your disfamiliarity
I don’t care to be
Destabilized, de-situated, discombobulated
I’d rather be at home
But there is in you that draws me to you
And it is not this desire to possess
But beside you I’m beside myself and yet that self is unknown so I destroy it
I only want you because you transmit light
I only possess you because you don’t let me see
There is opacity in your translucence unabsolvable
Dissoluble I resolve you through utterance
You are nothing, just possession, only was fun, now forget it

But adoringly you hold up fingers before me, only twice before

And I know myself male
Dropped to wooden floor
I cannot forgive myself the mirror you are
Mirror of cultural models, acculturated definitions
The mirror of gender interaction is distortion
In confusion I reach for you
But in reaching I am beating
And in beating you are bleeding
Shards spread around broken bits emitting light and I piece it back together
Mirror of gender now absolving I forget it
I am not it, and you are still beautiful

My hands are rough in your dark hair but rougher still are your feet and your nails
Dark arms wrapped into dark arms
There is hair on your arms that I cannot speak of
And experience in your voice that I can’t reflect
But not woman I hold you
But spirit I breathe you
And flesh I desire you
Your foreignness my reflection
There are mirrors in eyes that beg I remember
My pleasure without you
Your pleasure within me

You are woman convexity
I male concavity
You are woman concavity
I male convexity
There are places we were not meant to fit and in the space between there is possibility