What will you let yourself know?

And what will you put in boxes

And crush

Hoping it won’t spring up again

My attic is full of chests that I’ve battered in

Locked and guarded

That I’ve known I couldn’t see

Without ever looking inside

Even in learning, I was actively ignorant

I reread the same pages

“Sex changes”

And bodies that grew like mine but went by different names

But I still went by “mine” for 17 years

It never stung,

But the name’s been poisoning my dinner, night after night

Since I was a child

My first period was like an Ari Aster film

I cried for the entire day

And said I wanted to rip out the space between my legs

But girls must be girls

I am going to open the chest that I pulverized

Pull out all the words I breathlessly stuffed inside, in hopes that

Like a necromantic incantation

They might wake up the long-dead part of me