Beauty.

Indeed I was wrong. A bud blossoms in my chest.

… vanity? My head feels tight like a fruit about to burst.

The mirror cuts me with my own hands.

That’s why I keep my nails short.

I see my beauty and

defile it

out of exhaustion, restlessness, fear.

Somehow the angoisse is easier to deal with

when I do pointless things with my hands.

Inner frayedness becomes outer fraying.

Oftentimes I try to see my ancestors in my reflection.

I want to look more Mexican,

I want to look more Scandinavian:

you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Maybe if I still had my bold eyebrows, my dark lashes...

I look at my mustache.

Well I guess it’s not really a mustache–

It’s more just whiskers.

I think they’ve gotten darker.

I am not really a man

and not really a woman

but something more ancient.

My friend once said,

“It is so obvious to me

that I was meant to be a shape-shifter”

I feel the same way.

I do look strange,

and I am a tapestry of many cloths,

and I do not walk in the two straight lines

of society.

It’s hard but,

I think I love myself more than I used to.