The Gender Thing - Bailey LePage

If I had to describe the gender thing, it would be indiscernible from lost languages. You would not be able to translate what it feels like inside skin that was never going to fit right in the first place. Call me cursed from the beginning. I am starting to believe it.

This is what I want:

I want to be the deep mist of the forest in your dark academia aesthetic fantasy. I want to be the neon purple lights blurring past your punker street racer dreams. I want to be as harsh as desert sun and as light as sea air. I want to slip between the spaces of atoms and exist where I cannot be seen.

Not everything is about wants, so I have settled on ways to tell you who I am.

I am the eldritch beast your protagonist did not mean to summon. I am the poltergeist haunting the bones of the past you tried to bury. I am the howling of the wind of your favorite nightmare. I am the blessing before the meal, and I am the meal. I am the one you wish to see, and I am the curse upon the family.

Here, there is no way to tell you when I will be what, so look for me in the bed of the river, where there is a perfect stone to toss. See my hair in the ripples of the water and see my teeth in the sand. I am nothing and everything all at once and forever. And if you must know, if it is so important, I will tell you in a very lengthy way that I am absolutely, definitely, something.

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Bailey LePage is a recent graduate of the University of St. Thomas - Minnesota and is using their English degree to the best of their capabilities. They are a disabled, non-binary poet whose works focus on mental health, gender identity, and love, the three things on their mind the most often.