It’s obvious

Quinn Rennerfeldt
| poetry

 

When I’ve been crying. My face, a puffy moon. Heart, mean and wounded. My voice, a flat slick of fat on the soup top.

 

Last night I dreamt about guns. Guns and creatures lurking in the water. The internet says the guns are my anger, the creature my butch new haircut that you jokingly disdain. If I had the courage, maybe the guns could be my cock, the creature my confidence. The guns a cheeky wink, the creature a couple dancing, hips pressed into a hug. Instead, a passing comment gets to the quick of me, like the blue guts of a flame, and I cry silently on the couch behind a glass of gin and seltzer.

 

Can my body be breasts and my face a man. Can a man have eyeliner and a cunt. Can I femme a dick. These thoughts make me want to bite your neck. They make me want to keep crying. They make my eyes soft and swollen to the touch, like bloated, undercooked dough. They sharpen my teeth and slacken my resolve. They unmoor the boats so they float out to sea. They bind me to a person I no longer want to be.

 

Quinn Rennerfeldt is a queer poet, parent, and partner earning her MFA at San Francisco State University. Her work can be found in Cleaver, Mom Egg Review, SAND, elsewhere, and is forthcoming in A Velvet Giant. They are the Editor-in-Chief of Fourteen Hills, a graduate-run literary journal with SFSU.

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