Maddie Barone

Dysphoria as Scenes from a Horror Movie

I.

Like a paper weight my body heavies itself
around the room. It drags. It collapses limp
like a sail caught in a strong storm rushing
across the sea. It is the sea. It crashes full armed
and thrashing, a long echo hurling against 
my timbered throat. Unlike the sea, it does not find
rest on the sanded shore, sinking into ground
made stable by its coming. Unlike the sea,
it does not curate anything, does not produce shine
and pattern and leave stones glistening in sun
setting over the curve of itself. Instead, my body
heaves. It pours strong willed and cool.
Some days it is still and weaves gently through
the crowds on the street. Other days nothing will
stop it from bleeding salt and soot and wood
cracked down the middle, debris thrown and left
for me to deal with, for me to settle with my two
hands, rolling across the shivering expanse of skin
I pinch, tangle between my fingers, dig in nail just
enough to ache, to chase that lingering pang hot
in the pit of my stomach. The days are long.
My body lays itself down next to me. It shifts
its breasts against the woolen sheets. It opens
its mouth. Water rushes out, leaving a basin between us.

II.

On my grandparent’s fridge, a small version of myself
waves to the camera. Blonde hair pulled tight
into pigtails, freckled face red by the southern sun,
hands crossed in my lap. I wear my communion whites.
My little black buckled shoes, my starch white socks
with the frills fanning out on top. I smile in that way
all little girls are told to smile—full cheeked
and halfway to laughing, eyes almost closed, teeth
not yet burdened by the metal meant for straightening,
meant for pulling mouth narrow and pretty perfect, pretty
produced. I remember the wafer, its cardboard taste
and cardboard smell, how it stuck to the roof of my mouth,
how I washed it down with the blood I was given.
How after we all stood in a line, us girls in our little
white dresses and our little buckle shoes and our mouths
full of bodies, tongues-stained red. We held fast
to our little white purses with the little white straps, 
fingers pressing hungrily against our first rosaries,
picked out by our mothers with their eyes shining,
their hushed voices telling us you’re more than little
girls now and we nodded, and we said yes mommy
and we pressed our fingers to Jesus’ bare stomach,
to his arms stretched out, to his feet crossed at the ankle,
and we did not ask them what more we were meant to be.

III.

I cut my hair short. I look in the mirror and see a girl
grimacing back and I throw away all the reflective surfaces
in the house. I grow my hair out longer. I wear hats and
close my eyes when I pass glass entranceways to shops
I never go in. I think about pulling out all my teeth,
placing them in a precise order on the windowsill
and asking them for a different body, or at least a mouth
that will smile when the man down the street yells
or a mouth that will flutter when the man in the elevator
says what floor baby girl or a mouth that will laugh when
those women at the bar say body hair is for ugly dykes
and laugh, raise their glass and look at me with mouths
that say you better agree right now so I raise my glass and look
at the polished end of the fork balancing on my plate,
chicken salad half eaten and wonder if they can see the ugly
in the way my hands shake or if they saw the ugly as soon
as I walked in and so I ask the teeth on the windowsill
for a mouth that wears red lipstick and smiles politely,
a mouth that never smiles too hard, I ask the teeth
what is the right way to smile and they show me
it’s like this it’s like you’re happy but only happy
because someone says you can be do you understand and I don’t
but I put the teeth back in anyway andI find a mirror
lying in the road and I practice until not even I can see the ugly.

IV.

In the summers I flatten my chest with sports bras stacked
on sports bras round with tape. It hurts to roll
my shoulders back, to lift my arms above my head, to reach
for the coffee mug on the table. I feel the sweat drip down
and collect in the soft fabric of the bra against my skin.
I can smell the salt rising, can imagine how bitter it might be
against my tongue. It is not flat like a plain but rises like a
small hill rolling sweetly in the distance. I imagine my breasts
are like that—little mounds of dirt growing grass, dandelions,
weeds tangling discarded sticks, ant hills presenting themselves
to the ground, ants borrowing holes that seep into the skin,
that merge tunnels into my bloodstream, that make a home
among the organs churning in the juices of me.
They place the queen in my uterus. She lies her big head
Down against the hot part of me, waiting for her soldiers
to come make her worthy of their patronage. She waits
to be filled with eggs, little white clouds that spill sticky
sweet when they pop, squirmy larva emerging cool hearted
and wandering for their mother, the mother who says
nothing but points to the tunnels they’ve made of me,
shooing her babies in the direction of those that do the caring.
The queen does not look to see them go. She knows
Her ants will leave if she shuts down production, asks for the
simple silence of sleep. She knows she is loved for this one thing.

V.

Some days are long and hard to swallow. Others are the
sweet tang of a lemon squeezed. Others still are the rind
it leaves behind, lying still on the sill of the window
I leave open. The breeze grazes my skin, pinpricks of cold
left lingering, little bumps my father called goosepimples,
would put the warm of his palm on the chill of my shoulder
to chase that cold away. Some days I feel twenty-seven
watching my wife reading quietly on the coach. Some days
there is a cracking in the soil of my sternum, my chest,
and what emerges is something else. Is the something else
wit her head down when the boy in her class calls another boy
sissy and everyone laughs so loud it shakes the whole state.
Is the something else that blushes when her seatmates says
I’m so jealous of your curly hair and then turns away, the something
else that tilts her head when a boy kisses her in the hallway
and after throws up in the bushes behind the bus, is still wiping
the vomit from her mouth when she goes to quietly sit alone.
Is the something else that holds the rosary in her sweating
hands and asks god for a boyfriend or at least a boy that
will hold her hand in the hallway. He doesn’t even have to be
handsome or nice. Just boy. Just not the girl that smiles at her
during recess or the girl across the street that always asks to
playhouse and always says you’re my husband and the pit of her
shakes and everything feels right and good and something else.

VI.

Other days the crack splinters further and what emerges heavy
footed and still shiny with salt has their hands spread out. 
When I shift the crack splits me down the middle
and all these something else’s press themselves to my skin—
the imprint of brass buckles on the top of my foot,
a rosary rung around my freckled wrist,
harsh imprints where bra met brat met tape met sweat
slinking down, the soft tug where pigtails could be,
a mouth trying on teeth trying on red lipstick on pretty on pink—
until a face emerges from the soft curl of my back
with her eyes turned down, neck twisty in all
the effort of looking away. I touch the soft pressure
of her cheeks until they grow hot and steaming.
She stays still and silent and blinks
slowly at the floor. I ask her to say something, if she likes this
bathroom tiling, if she feels as heavy as I do the days I shoulder
myself out the front door, if she likes what I did to our hair,
if she remembers the girl across the street
and would she like to know how god never brought us
a boy and how glad she’s allowed to be.
When she nods, my skin pulls tight, and I see through her face
looking up at me, see through her to the blood rushing
in my veins, to the muscles contracting where I am twisted
to see her in the mirror, one face just the tiny version of the other.

---

Maddie Barone is a queer poet from the Southern United States. They received their MFA from the University of South Carolina. Their work has appeared in Quarterly West, The Penn Review, The Pinch, The Madison Review, and elsewhere. They live in South Carolina with their wife and two cats.