Envy is not green but
something perhaps a little more sickening to me
than chartreuse and a spoiled ego.
Envy is when i see boys walking by,
looking down at myself again, i see my curves
and i hate them.
i don’t want them.
i want to look like the boys.
Envy is seeing other girls more androgynous
than i;
girls with broader shoulders
and with more angular faces.
why can’t I look like that?
i hear voices deeper than mine:
tenor, baritone—
and I shred my throat
day-by-day,
trying to come close to the pitch.
Envy is the aches in my body when changing
my posture from legs to shoulders;
from changing my stride
and preventing my hips from swaying.
i want to look like them.
seeing these people makes my insides feel
like they’re being twisted with a red-hot fork;
and it hurts, oh God, it hurts.
it hurts to know i will never look
like how i see myself.
another assignment from my poetry class. we were given a word or an object and had to write a poem about it. i chose to write about my gender identity and the envy i feel for those more masculine, or more androgynous, than i am. this poem ended up being really gender-binary heavy and i'm not a fan of that... there is more than male or female, but i'm just not sure how else to phrase some of this. any feedback is, of course, welcome.