Poetry by Syd Vinyard
for Tessa
I tell my partner to imagine my body
as what it doesn’t look like. I think
about bringing a used Band-Aid to my lips
and wringing it for excess testosterone
as they trace the patches of hair that sprout
like bachelor buttons from the injection sites
on my lower abdomen. I ask them—
Can you see my gender
amid each strand? Or where it was
at least? —as if hair growing
in odd places was the mark of not being
a woman. I turn over onto my side,
feel my thighs pool and press together—
you’re still handsome—they place
their hand on my hip. I hold their words
as if they could be bottled
into a prescription labeled “gender
affirming.” They do not see a thick thighed body,
or a bound chest. They see me running
through fields of cornflowers, shirtless
and unbound.
