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Feb 2015
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.
eli
Written by
eli
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