self-portrait as fagus sylvatica pendula [nonbinary]
in my bathroom with
my razor at my cheek
all the thin limbs of
my beard teething down
the drain, my face hiding
beneath my face, weeping
itself naked. in the dream
where my father finally
teaches me to shave,
the door is open like
broken sunlight, flowers
squinting beneath
my eyelids. in the dream,
nobody bleeds. in the
dream, the mirror is a portal
made of skin and light,
behind which a world
dreams itself new like
a scab. in that world
my body full of honey,
my body full of feathers,
my body full of all the bodies
it dreams itself as. my real hands
softening at my neck
like roots. my real mirror
trusting my real face, the
gravity trusting the razor,
the light trusting the light.
Gift
You’re not sure what you’re made of. When the stone blue and blue
with veins like yours showed up on the playground, you
took it because loneliness, like blood, better on the inside.
The stone in your pocket, the stone in your pocket making
a blue map in your pocket, your fingers reaching again
for the stone when your body wanted to go somewhere
your body couldn’t go, in that private dark your hands
worrying a second life onto the stone, the blues warming
to greens like day. And the boy your body asked
questions about, asked What season is it on his hands? or
Can he lift me like a secret on his shoulders? about,
how you gave him the stone, his nostrils flaring like
whispers, how you were small as sugar, he said What
do I do with this? Not that you loved the boy, but this moment
running bruisewarm and blue in your mind like a galaxy. Not that you
loved the boy, your teeth hardening into answers.
Tyler Raso (she/they) is a poet, essayist, and teacher. Her work is featured or forthcoming in POETRY, The Adroit Journal, Electric Literature, The Offing, Black Warrior Review, DIAGRAM, Salt Hill Journal, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere. She's currently in residence as a fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and she is the author of the collection Mirror Would Be A Beautiful Name for A Child (Noemi Press, 2027).