Self-made man

I see sixteen-year-olds now, with their subway chatter and baby fat, and try to imagine the ways they are saving each other’s lives.

I saw myself, sitting away from the deck and the bottomless beers, listening to crickets and considering the loss of a body in metaphorical terms, drinking out of my own, grown-up Solo cup, me and my many-gendered grief.

I’m trying to tell you that there’s something steady inside each of us, something unconcerned with expectation or gender or fear. There’s a center, and it’s like a friendly ghost of every person we’ve ever been.

Em and I were both poets in high school, though she is the last one standing, her body of work forming into something beautiful as the son in her belly.…