My aunt loved me, asked me:
will you be the flower
girl at my wedding? But I'm not
a girl, I argued, and she persuaded me:
you'll get to throw rose petals

onto the aisle, walk before me, both of us
crushing them beneath our feet, my gown
dragging over them. I agreed, I wanted
nothing but chivalry.

At the church, my mother and I
waited in the small room. She brushed
my aunt's hair until the dress arrived.
Isn't it beautiful? And I agreed until they tried
to put me in it. I'd seen my father

and uncle earlier, standing in a circle
of other men, smoke hovering over their heads, a halo,
and their voices kind, quiet, and deep. I told my aunt –
I want to wear a suit like them! She promised

if I wore the dress I could wear anything
I wanted after: army pants, a sheriff
badge, cowboy hat, and pistols. My mother shot her
a look in the mirror where we posed, both of them
angelic in white, and me, not yet dressed,

half naked. Today I wake from another dream
in which I have a beard, no breasts
and am about to go skinny dipping
on a foreign beach with four other men.

I'm afraid to undress, won' take off my shorts
so they grab me, one at each ankle, the other two
by each wrist. I am a starfish hardening,
the sun hovers above, a hot
mirror where I search for my reflection.

I close my eyes. It's too intense. The light
where my lover is tracing her fingertips
around two long incisions in my chest. Each sewn tight
with stitches, each a naked stem, flaring with thorns.