"FINE LINE TRIPTYCH" by Matt Mitchell

​​Matt Mitchell is a writer from Ohio. His work appears in, or is forthcoming to venues like The Boiler, NPR, The Shallow Ends, Homology Lit, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry, among others.

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FINE LINE TRIPTYCH 
 
the universe a fine line               on the curve of my hips,                         spread open like an ocean
for the intersex boys.                  i studied the way i hum                          over the pronoun of dna,
i reach my hands                         into the bellies of stars.                           i feel my skin stretching
over every muscle,                      carved straight from atoms                    along a coast of gender,
balancing atop a colony             of medical charts,                                     god shouldering me
through times when                   my body was a country sprawling         across a gray area,
chromosomes turned neon       in the electric water of                            my open mouth, howling
beneath the dark of                    a waiting room.                                         like a disorder hungry for
a rapture,                                     i will never think of myself as                 anything more than 
a fine line, as                               anything more than                                  the remnants of spring,
some destruction of                   a girl                                                             sent out to sea,
a y-chromosomed angel           my father never wanted                           to be destroyed.