you were a little girl once
who played outside your brick duplex
in a yard no bigger than a walk-in closet,
while your grandma smoked Marlboro Lights
and called from the chipped railing:

“you’re not being very ladylike,”

you with your scabby knees
and your knotted hair
that you prayed to god would all fall out
because you’d prefer a bald head
to brushing away split ends.

you decorated dandelion dresses
with grass stains,
and your palms were always sticky with blood
from playing tackle football on the gravel
with the neighborhood boys.

under a mahogany table
caked in peanut butter and jelly,
you slumbered summer nights
on the floor of the dining room
so the wall-unit air-conditioner
could sprinkle ice water on your toes
to douse your body and soothe the second degree burns
that blistered and bubbled on your shoulders.

your ear was always pressed against
the radio as you tried to catch
the Pirates score late at night,
every night, for years.

back in ’99, your tears smeared the lines
of a hand-drawn scorecard
when Jason “the Kid” Kendall,
their catcher and your hero,
cracked his ankle so it dangled from his right leg
after he tried to outrun a bunt
on a bang-bang play
but landed on the foul line of first base.

afterwards, they replayed the scene
on TV for days,
and all the sports writers kept saying
he’d probably never
play baseball again.

but when you were 13,
you learned that baseball wasn’t ladylike,
like you learned to just shave it off when your grandma
said your armpit hair was disgusting
and to look down when men
cat-called you on the street
like those guys who pulled up in their Ford Mustang
and asked you and your best friend
if you wanted to be their sluts for the night.

when you were 17,
you ran away and slept behind a dumpster
in Dilworth
because you didn’t want your family to know
that you had breasts like your palms used to be—
all sticky with blood—
after you bound your chest with ace bandages
just tight enough to make it
as flat as you’d fantasized it’d be
but tight enough to rip the skin
around your ribcage raw.

the man outside the Circle K
didn’t mind or he didn’t notice
that you were a gender bending freak,
did he?
because his gums smacked in his mouth
where his two front teeth used to be
before they were devoured by chew.

he looked at you and your hollow cheeks
and whimpering belly,
and he offered to exchange
a Slim Jim for a blow job.

he didn’t know you,
just like your grandma
and those cat-calling men
didn’t know you were never
a little girl.

you thanked god
they didn’t know,
while you wished to god
they had known

but you wised up
and stopped believing in gods who
turned those who looked back
at queers like you
into pillars of salt.

one day, you are going to grow up
and be the kind of person
you wished those men
would have been.
you’ll be as scrappy
as Jason “the Kid” Kendall
who came back an All Star
and hit .320
the year after his ankle bone
burst through his skin.

one day, each curly, black hair
that grows on your chin
or around your belly button
will remind you
that even if you aren’t him,
you were never her either.

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