contusion (an aubade)

by PHOEBE NEREM

When I was a girl I wanted to be a boy but I was never mean enough. I got called a pansy by my hockey team after taking a puck to the face and then got checked into the boards. I didn’t feel pain from the bruises but they stuck around—

   grape then cerulean then lime— 
      to remind me of what I was not, and
       that 
      hurt much worse.

The evidence is black and blue and all over my knees. I did bump into that table this morning and I did drunkenly break the shower curtain last night and I do not have enough iron in my blood. 

It started like those bruises—a sudden pang 
   of pain 
      before color rushes in—
bloated blood
   vessels burst 
      with indigo incantation.

Can’t be a boy so I’ll be a menace, a blood-boiling hemorrhage, my heart burns with the heat of a motherfucking furnace. Melted my girlhood down to its bone-dry marrow.

Color rushed in— 
   Cupid’s arrow—
   no room for bloodless purity in the deluge of
      violet & violence. Love
         speaks the same language.
          Fluently.

Make it through the twilight, the desaturation—a held breath, a trembling lower lip—transfusion and transformation only occur when there’s room. When you’re empty

and hollow and begging god or anything to fill you
again.
   I did the song, the dance, 
      the eyeliner, the waist-trained
       stockings,
         the push-up bras between
          potato-sack-hoodies
         & knotted hair, treated 
gender like it was a dare.

Make room. The stars step out of the spotlight at dawn. The sun swallows one side of the Earth and I swallow the other. My knees are spotted black & blue but my body stomps on,

like crashing cymbals and trumpets and star-shaped
confetti. 
   Liberation from decision—
      desire without destination—
   pansy-purple splotches give color only to the
    flesh’s resignation.

You think in black-and-white.
I offered bloodless purity up like a prized pig,
I slaughtered it, you understand—
I made room. It broke my furnace heart but
   now I can see the colors of the flames.

Which is to say—

The sun rose to kiss the
Bruised sky & I felt like
I could run for miles
Nevermind shin splits
Soles blistering skin
Lungs shudder breathing in
Runner’s high comes 
Fast and furious &
From within