By Lindsay Maddox Pratt
I stand before you, uncertain and wavering,
in a moment of still light,
pregnant with the weight of its potential.
If I stripped down before you,
showed you my parts like a patient
spread before your view
would you understand me less?
Or would the anatomizing
lend itself like a map open upon the dash,
letting you trace my latitude with your fingertips
till you find the corresponding number of my heart?
Would you think
“I know where you are”?
Would you use it now
to catch me and hold me under a pin?
Find a glass case to keep me in?
I draw a broken line
along my breasts.
Under florescent lights
I see bruises
and past scars of misunderstood wishes,
but in this streetlight-flooded room
it’s all a faded yellow
and I am thankful for the friendly ambiguity of shadows,
making a marriage of
silicone lines and flesh.
What would a young girl do
with my boy’s yearning
but pretend
or walk away,
leaving me to the solitude
of my sweet disaster?
In the dull glow of evening
I regret this fear of cartography
which makes me answer him in tears,
so he can never find his way
into my home
and I can stay
an undiscovered country
Lindsay, 24, lives in San Francisco and studies psychology and Queer Studies at City College at San Francisco, and works with the Gender Diversity Project, an organization focused on transgender activism within Education. In addition, Lindsay is an actor, artist and singer.