Content warning: Family body trauma, body shaming, suggested incest/molestation

MY FIRST TUCK

appeared, or disappeared, in-
            side my aunt-with-the-accent’s 
bathroom, during a Christmas 
            break of 1974— in the frost-
broken start of puberty’s thaw like 
            a slow-spreading flicker of heat.

I’m standing naked in a tub, in
            the quickening time between 
showered and toweling—where 
            I’m perched in her tub, it is hers,
the matriarch of every room. 

She enters, or struts, with a worn 
            towel big enough to surround me,
I’ve already made a smooth fold 
            in place of my parts, no need to ask 
why there’s no boy’s proof of boy.
            My legs almost crossing, I clench 
my tuck, mine without question, 
            manning its folds while my arms
reach out for the towel; my aunt, 
            laughing, head bowed, asks Where is it!? 

Nothing must unfold just yet.
            Revelations begin too young.
I had nothing to show or tell when
            I was naked, standing and trembling
wet, between genders. The towel drops,
            I’m stuck with this male—me—in visible chill, 
the kind you don’t know to sense, such as 
            winter that felt like a windier Florida 
summer going on and on, a withstood, standing 
            state that continues smoothly, outside and in. 

When you hoard a safe private place on 
            your body, it goes for good too soon as
if the first tuck were the deepest. And
            this is where you’ll ask, But whose 
tuck does this belong to? Like the first
            page of a book you own but can’t even skim,

there is no fleshed-out ex libris that 
            covers a gender’s library unowned.
Whenever you run your hand across 
            this ghosted spot and spine, you’ll shudder. 
Because I couldn’t say Stop, take your fuck-
            ing hand away as if this was my first tuck. It
wasn’t. Didn’t I like it somewhat, attention, but
            what price is still paid in fifty years, I know 

how to be folded standing up, find myself 
            on a map, there’s nothing here but a spot, 
or a place for the absence of boy and the 
            short-lived dream of a shallow, skin-deep girl.
This must be the neutered place where 
            nothing kindred is left, will ever be left to feel.

About the author

DUSTY M. V. PEREZ earned an M.A. in English from FSU as well as an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Houston. They are an Associate Professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, FL. Their poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Florida Review, Beyond Queer Words, Journal Of Florida Studies, BLOOM, Glass Poetry Journal, Crab Orchard Review, Coffee People, and Route 7 Review, among others. They can trace some of their non-binary “theirstory” origins back to around age 13, when they thrillingly sold their bicycle at a yard sale to a neighborhood woman who thought they were a girl.

Photo by David Schultz on Unsplash.