THE SOLARIUM

Author’s Note: The following is a poem I wrote in 2021, when I first started coming out as non-binary. I designed some stickers based on a few of the sillier lines for a Pride festival I was a vendor at recently, and people were curious about the poem they came from, so I wanted to share it here. I might do a revamped version of it one day, but this is the poem as it was originally written. Happy Pride!

Gender’s a dispenser of pink and blue gumballs and I am a quarter that got stuck in the coin slot.

Gender is that feeling when you think you’re gonna sneeze but that tingling sensation just won’t go AWAY.

Gender is a magnifying glass and I’m a very crispy ant.

Gender is that dusty ass glass of water that’s been on your bedside table for months now because—hey, you never know when you might get thirsty, right?

Gender’s a performance and I am a clown.

Gender’s a flock of screaming seagulls and I am a French fry abandoned on the boardwalk. 

Gender’s a kid with a slide whistle who doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up.

Gender’s a tall glass of milk and you’re lactose intolerant, but you drink it all anyway and get the shits and everyone around you is like, “Oh, my god, who let you have milk?!”

Gender is the silk blouse your parents won’t let you leave the house in, the leather jacket you wore when you snuck out to pride.

Gender’s the slurs they will hurl at your love. 

Gender is she/her because they/them is too hard and xe/xir is impossible.

Gender is when they take attendance and you raise a reluctant hand.

Gender is absence.

Gender is presence.

Gender is butterfly kisses and dandelion wishes, petals plucked from daisies—

They’ll accept me, they’ll accept me not. 

Gender is the pain in your father’s eyes when you tell him you will not be his daughter.

Gender’s the pleasure of twisting the knife, 

Of changing your name and chasing the wind.

Gender is when the wind strokes your hair like a mother and you know, it will all be okay.

Gender is every shade of subtle sunset,

Every shade of bracing night. 

Gender’s the sand at the beach that won’t come out from between your toes.

Gender’s the whisper of the sea in your ear.

Gender’s a garden and I am a snake.

Gender is jumping, leaps and bounds.

Gender is a ticking time bomb and I don’t even know how to read the clock.

Gender’s a sucking, crushing, meaningless void with stars too far apart to matter.

Gender is cosmic. Gender is grand.

Gender is unfathomable,

With no desire to simplify itself for the sake of being understood.

Gender is a supernova and I am the star that will cool from its nebula.

Gender is celestial, and I am Solaris.