I’m digging
underneath
the crab apple tree by our old house
with only my fingers. Searching
for the shiniest signs
of my boyhood. I don’t
want to think too hard
about what would have been different.
If we were to swallow down this story
and start again.
I don’t sign any name
on the birthday card I hand
to Mom. I don’t know how
to call myself her son
and say ‘I love you’ all while
sitting across from her
in the living room.
I mean, some days I think
that maybe transphobia will be gone
in say, fifty years.
I mean,
considering the trajectory
of things. Let’s trace
the graph of then to now
in permanent marker. Let’s
soak to our knees in kiddie pool optimism.
This morning,
I say my name over
and over again
until it fits the cavern
of my mouth. Some
people speak of transition
as a sliding glass door
between two separate selves:
a boy and a girl
drawing stars with the grease
from their fingers.
I’m trying
to say that I’m not any
different now,
or that I am.
I try not to think about
my future as a man like a tree
without roots. I’m chewing
optimism to the core
until its seeds scrape
the roof of my mouth.
Let’s wash our hands
in possibility
until each finger
drowns in its own wrinkles.
Look, I’m trying
to tell a story
about the grandson
not in family photos. I’m trying
to smile against
the span of all this future
without showing any
of my teeth.
R.C. Davis is a high school junior from Oak Park, Illinois. He is a 2019 winner of the Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Awards and has work forthcoming in Driftwood Press Literary Magazine and 3Elements Review.