Gender is Fluid by Miriam Gayize

gender is fluid 

this is a statement I say

confidently, because I look like my father 

and he looks like his mother

when he smiles

this is how I've come to know him, 

a man with a face I share and the smile of the woman he named me after.

femininity finds me hidden and she plays along, fingers reaching with my own in seek of solitude or digging for a void when truly what I need is a mother. 

masculinity holds out my wound, exposed, circumcised; a bullet in the shadow - moving slowly through my misty mind.

gender is fluid, this is a statement I now resent, because I look like my father and the woman who made him smile.

I write this from a home; tattered and moulded - gently to feel safely in, a structure drenched in the sweat of a man's hands; pleasant enough to stay in and palpable enough to fit in.

gender is a home learning how to love 

its' many faces when resentment visits and reflects 

the androgynous mess of love, birth and the impending reality of death.