Lorelei Bacht
Hirsute
Are you a boy or a girl? –
What I am is surrounded. On the playground,
I have to choose: boy / girl / girl-boy / boy-girl,
because: my bushy brows and fuzzy upper lip
warrant public explanation, unless I choose
to continue to groom for hours, hours and hours.
By twelve, I’ve learned that there is a threshold
to pain, after which nervous endings grow far too
irritated to feel a thing – now, peel, peel, peel
off waxy bands, finishing touch: tweezers.
It’s better than the cream that burns for weeks,
leaving behind unsightly afterthoughts of yellow
chicken fluff. Desperate times, desperate measures:
a well-intentioned dermatologist offers to drill
holes in my face, with a (small-sized) darning needle.
The puncture first, then electricity. Rattle of teeth.
I must absolutely not drop that metal thing –
We are only just beginning! Then there are:
drugs, a wide, malignant paraphernalia
of injections, pills and tablets, change in diet,
I should try massages to grow hair where it
counts: on top, not at the front. On top, I am
bald as a baby chickadee, which no-one finds
charming. My mother apportions medication,
offers to perform injections herself.
Doctors say yes.
Cloaked
The first time I choose my own clothes, Mother bursts out
laughing – her tears, a stream of pearls rolling; she sends
me to my room to think. I learn: I am a little girl, precious,
a wearer of the most elaborate, uncomfortable garments,
layer upon layer of cotton, linen, silk – all tailor-made.
The patterns: chalk, birds-eye, pinstripe, Bengal –
all that in various gradients of pink – it is always: pink,
cream or white. In photographs, I am a pensive miniature
of a bourgeoise, my father’s hair, my mother’s eyes,
wicker hoops and straw canoe hats. Over the long, long,
years, her grasp loosens, she learns to abandon all hope
of turning me pretty, as I refuse to even comb my hair.
It is time to experiment. I wear: my father’s clothes, my brother’s
clothes, my great-grandfather’s brother’s clothes (when no-one
is around). I am a dandy: my pocket money goes into greys,
dark blues, blue jeans, lapels, top hats – why not? I am: the girl,
the boy, the everything, the fresh air breathing in-between. My face
painted purple, orange, I need nothing to do with skirts or cleavages –
I invent a passage right through your walls of bricks.
Lorelei Bacht (she/they) is currently running out of ways to define herself, and would like to reside in a tranquil, quiet form of uncertainty for a while. Their recent work has appeared and/or are forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic, SWWIM, Sinking City, Barrelhouse, The Inflectionist Review, Hecate, Menacing Hedge, Corporeal, and elsewhere. They are also on Instagram @lorelei.bacht.writer and Twitter @bachtlorelei