It happens from time to time, inevitable
as a hangnail. Someone asks,
Where’d you learn to dance like that?
As if I haven’t been in this body my whole life.
I was as puzzled as them when a first man asked
to split a cab with me. We were headed the same way,
throats rumbled from a night of howling.
Both sobered when he offered to pay.
His gaze caught on my smiling denial, my refusal to hold
debts of any kind. Weeks later, I called and he came.
Heat and laughter. Lips open wide enough to see
my silver-filled teeth glinting in the dark. The spectacle
of my hair wild, mouth glittering like a cave.
I can hardly blame them.
Give me the leather jacket, the spiked collar,
the mane of serpents, the gloved hands—
all warning coloration to help them discern
alright, Jack from dead fellow.
In cold weather I leave condensation
on the subway seat, heat steaming off me like a titan.
Monstrous and no longer a woman, I have no grin
or grimace; instead, a fixed mouth
that someone likened to a rosebud as they watched
me pretend to sleep, roil in dream.
