chest

I learned the word “daughter”

before I learned the word “wrong.”

It fit in everyone else’s mouth like a hymn they’d always known

but somehow i could never annunciate it quite right

Before I was born the doctors leaned over my mother’s body,

grainy black-and-white flicker on the screen between them

they said, almost certain,

“It looks to be a boy!”

I think they saw my soul form within the static

cursing nature for how wrong she had been.

for what she had done to me.

Later they corrected themselves.

The room rearranged its expectations.

Blue folded back into pink

My name shifted, future ripped from my tiny hands

I came out screaming

I used to wish on quiet things:

birthday candles, 11:11,

the first star brave enough

to show itself.

I borrowed boyhood in secret:

in the mirror’s softened light,

in oversized polo shirts, throwing a fit anytime I was put in a dress,

in the low register of my laugh

when no one was listening.

Each small act a rehearsal

for a life that could've been mine

Puberty came like a negotiation.

My voice: stubborn, secretive

began to sink lower each year,

a small mercy I held

like contraband.

Every crack and drop felt like evidence

that something in me

was telling the truth.

Now in my dorm room I am older, maybe braver.

Shielded by the thin morning light

I pull the binder over my shoulders,

stretch the fabric down my tender ribs,

flatten my mixed feelings.

It presses hard against my chest —

a quiet ache I carry to class,

breathing shallow but steady.

I borrowed boyhood in secret once.

Now I wear it in layers

Each its own costume, a game of pretend

Something that can never be truly mine.