STELLA DUFFY
Writer & Performer

You - look like a girl

with your long hair and your sharp cheek bones

and your eyes eyes eyelashes

saying Come Here. Now.

You - look like a boy

with your no-curves

no-breasts hips

tight lips tight lips open.

Now.

We - are not like them,

like they are. We are not them

we are you and I and you and me

and we are us.

Not them.

Just us.

Here.

Now.

We - are not androgyne,

not not-sex,

we are all sex,

all us, all of us together,

in together,

out together,

and just the two, and

me and you,

and this is the way we'll always be.

Meandyou.

Youandme.

Us - How it is to be us,

to be we,

to be standing here,

lying here, grounded and flying,

high and also still. Still.

I - have written stars on you,

scars on you.

I have written me on you.

I - can't read with my eyes closed

and so I feel you through my fingertips,

Braille your letters on my skin,

touch fingertips, wingtips, mercury heels of you.

They - don't understand us,

countermand us,

demand he and she, and we say no.

No to the ruts and the signs

and the signifiers and the pattern,

the persistence of what has been before, always.

No to the insistence of his and hers,

pretty pink and baby blue,

pretend divisions to bring us together, keep us apart.

Sugar on my puppy dogs tail, spice on my frog leg snails.

That's what we are made of.

Mine - your are mine

-short story inspired by Tod's New Shoe Collection,

feature in the 22nd biannual issue of AnOther.