11/13/2012
My best friend R messages me on Facebook: They’re looking for writing by queer Southern women or whatever! You’d be perfect!
I have never called myself queer, though somehow everyone can tell. My deep voice, my short nails, my crosscut, tiny bangs, my blazers, my Docs? The women I love secretly? The way I resist being called girlfriend, especially with male partners? My entirely queer pack of best friends? Whatever it is, R knows something I have never told them.
I send a poem about gender, how I’m scared of my body and what it does, how distant I feel from it, how I long for it to make sense to me, how universal and minute this all feels, about fucking and how I can get somewhere mystical through closing my mind and opening my body.
The poem is published, and my name is spelled J-E-S-S-I-E
