Gender Poem 2

My fingers seek out the shape of the chord as I wait for the bus.
I will hear the notes all day. They will dance
between the crest
and the trough of the span
taken up by the shape of the music.
On repeat.

Euphoria is
the peak of the ascending pattern,
the brightest note,
chiming through the indistinct voice of the lower strings.
It is when my mind can wander
to the place where the music is welling up.

My faith in it lagged behind the confession by many years.
I am nonbinary.
Nonbinary?
The words vanish as soon as you say them.

Shh. It’s okay. Take some tiny steps.
Listen. A spark, a glint. You can start to knit around it.
I felt it in the song. I saw it when I closed my eyes and imagined the structure of things.

About the author

Hi I’m Ciarán. My pronouns are they/ them, I’m a Magandjin based poet and I perform regularly at the Echoes from the Cave Inn poetry slam. The slam is held on the first Tuesday of the month at the Cave Inn in Woolloongabba, admission is free, and you can find details on their instagram echoes_fromthecave. The central theme of my poetry is the development of a compassionate inner voice as an antidote to the inner critic.

Photo by Miguel Alcântara on Unsplash.