YOU WILL NEVER SEE THE BACK OF THE MOON

by Christiana Smith

To you, my gender is non-binary.
To you, my ‘non-binary’ isn’t just not the binary boy and girl. To you, my gender is the third gender in your gender trinity. To you, the meaning of non-binary is separate from the truth. To you, my gender has rules I must follow, roles I must play.

to them, my gender is ever-expanding galaxies.
to them, my gender is black cats in the month of october.
to them, my gender is harmonies and melodies and dissonance.
to them, my gender is the ice cream from a truck on a hot summer day.
to them, my gender is the fire of a comet that burns my soul and loves me.

To you, my gender is defined by misogyny, the harassment of men as I walk down the street.
To you, my gender is defined by the twirl of my hair, an action I can not control.
To you, my gender is defined by asking for help, despite the fact that I am in danger when I do so. To you, my gender is defined by the clothes in my closet, even though many of them are hand-me-downs.
To you, my gender is defined by the actions that happened to me or behaviors I absorbed, not by me.

to them, my gender is the awe of the constellations that span the night sky.
to them, my gender is the unwrapping of gifts from someone who actually cares.
to them, my gender is the swelling in their chest of the bridge of their favorite song.
to them, my gender is the happiness of a cat as they bask in the sun, belly bared and warm.
to them, my gender is the sound of my poetry; thrumming of the rhythms and beats and rhymes.

To you, my pronouns are they/them.
To you, my pronouns are simple, and you still seem to struggle.
to them, my pronouns are an infinite void.
to them, my pronouns are the hole of a donut.
to them, my pronouns are the stars in front of the moon.
to them, my pronouns are nothing, and by being nothing, they are everything.

To you, my name is not my own.
To you, my name is my aunt’s, my grandmother’s; a legacy I never wished for.
to them, my name was the food of the gods, immortality in a bowl.
to them, my name was the color blue, the stars woven into the blanket of night.
to them, my name is a color and a plant and a smell and a flavor, light and beautiful.
to them, my name is the bits that will never burn away, the smoke after the blazing fire.

To you, I am a blank sheet of paper, fragile and flat.
to them, i am three-dimensional intricacies and knots and everything you will never understand. To you, I am incomplete, a puzzle that is missing too many pieces.
to them, i am a puzzle that has no solution and was never meant to.

to Me, I am whole.

Kandinsky Light
mixed media
Geoffrey Geiger