imogen xtian smith, 2022

it’s me again, come clean. i hid behind brown whiskers, whiskey & shame, cloistered in girlfriend’s closets from folk who’d clock me faggot out F-150s, hang your head Tom Dooley stuck in their teeth. Camouflage & excess, white lines & booze—everything inside me cardinals, prunes, pulls a rosin gut drone to recollect. i say remember bb, your first dress? Pink & pretty with blue lattice & curls, looking all Christina from Christina’s World, high country Carolina. It was easy getting drunk in leotard, laughing. Easy spending summer among laurel, forgetting Laurie Foster, dead femmes drowned & raised americana. More difficult to untwist the thorn, tongue jelly & cauterize, divest from fear within. Could i ever be one of them—like that woman i’d pass on King St., 14-eyed Docs & stubble chin, rouge lips & black dress buying goth CDs on weekends?

    Not exactly—also yes.

Here i am, soldered together with Marlboro kisses, Vintage Seltzer sober in floral print, alter for rhododendron & metro rat—swap Brown Mountain for cherry tips, Maria Hernandez & chosen fam bound deep as Hodges Gap.    Appalachia,
i paint my eyelids bluer than blue ridges so neither of us gotta look far to find. If you see me out your window, i’m every name you spit—friend, sister, brother, fag—clad shameless in Queen Anne’s lace. Find me staring up Bed-Stuy beeches, a bit of my heart back on Beacon with the scrappy mountain ash. Lonely town, i can smile now, remembering that first girl i knew—warm at home & listening to The Cure. i dream a dyke bar for every hollow, queeraoke sluts singin’ Tammy off key, highways safe for walking, ballads & barn quilts & string figures claiming joy. i dream we dredge rivers & find no women there.