THE SHADOW

for Elizabeth Grosz

Toggling time
by eye
a couple blinks
into the future
makes the kids dizzier
to leave one blonde
comma and return through another
while the gap is stuffed
with rough visions of brain life
we watched the shadows turn back
into a dumb basil leaf
when speech combs for beauty
we rave against it
like weary green giants
sleep against valleys
rising and falling
to cry
quietly forward
without the courage
of crying harder
we buried our disguises
within the complication gender
brings easy to our pronouns
which must all be reinvented
watching the shadows turn back again
into a wound on someone’s body
where they were split open
by the disruption blinking makes
time travel isn’t easy
it rips everyone apart
I lost everything
when I went
and had
to reinvent
all of it
even the pronouns
even the way I
turn myself into shadow