Soothsayer

Me dad mom

watching Jim Carey.

Truman show.

Mom is scratching his back

on my four-post bed with her beautiful fingernails.

We’re all laughing together.

I’m rubbing my hands down my dad’s back too.

I look at my own fingers and they look like a man’s.

But it feels nice, and I like that I’m contributing something.

I identify with Truman in his little

carved out space saying goodbye to everything he was tricked to believe.

That house will never be experienced again that way.

Upstairs, years later, I was told that a baby brother was growing in my momma’s belly.

I was elated but also was overcome with a still sadness that he would have to endure what I had been plagued with and more.

It was too late for us to delight in the normal sibling dynamic, me being almost 10 years older.

I was to be teacher. To be babysitter. To be mother.

The next day I walked to our little river in the backyard,

I climbed the limestone rock in the shape of a stagasourarce,

I touched the knot in the back of my ponytail,

I was brought up to be a beautiful woman.

But the weight of work has taken its tole.

And the man I love, I love for love.

My “birth right” — I’ve chosen to forsaken.

It’s something we need to talk about.

The weight of the world leans towards men.

I wish

I was the first born son.

It must be so incredible to be that.

The pain

Of being a woman that cannot reject the tradition of every father that told her to

Wear a bra in the house.

And every man that looks handsome in their old age

And every woman that I put under a microscope

I wish I could see you as beautiful.