my masculinity hits my giggle with a shovel & churns it
into mud and gravel. it runs a thick hand down
my stomach & turns the mirror away, cracks open
my bones & sucks out the please and thank you.
when a man grabs me in the club, it is both my ready fists
& my silence after. my masculinity crushes my tear ducts
in its fists & lets them drip onto the floor when I’m alone,
crushed like beer bottle caps. it says that I am always
the shoulder & never the one made small by grief
& collapsed into an embrace. it replaces my spine
with a steel rod, yanks back my hairline & burns
the skirts in the back of my closet. it scrapes
the deadname from my tongue with a sawblade, leaves me
to choke on the blood. it sniffs my cologne for any hint of                                                                            flowers & insists I must smell like tobacco and burnt                                                                                    pinewood, that all growth begins with destruction.