Two Poems by Meeah Williams
What Happened to All the Unicorns?
I’m a good girl.
I do my homework.
I assiduously read the comment section
of every transgender story I find online
before I leave the house
I splay my fingers on the kitchen table
& wait for my nails to dry
& get my daily
dose of tough love from the experts
who are kind enough to inform me
that I’d better be extra careful walking
their streets
under their sun
under their moon
that I’d best consider well at whom I smile
in their restaurants
their bars
their parks
their supermarkets
their bathrooms
that I have a lot
of secrets no one wants to know
& I’d best protect them with my life
They inform me that God
doesn’t make mistakes
& doesn’t make people like me
that I’d do best in the meantime
to answer to whatever name they’ve given me
because my birth certificate knows me
better than I do myself that my DNA
cannot be changed to form the word “woman”
no matter how tortuously
I rearrange the letters
Every morning they remind me that I don’t
exist & if I still insist they just might have to
beat me to death to prove it
& I’ll deserve it
They remind me that you can’t
just go around thinking you’re a unicorn
& not expect trouble & as proof they ask
how many unicorns do you see anyway
& I’m not sure whether I dare to tell them
that I see them everywhere
they’re all around us
there are more of us than they’ll ever know.
Girl in Flesh-Colored Space Suit
I’ve tried to make myself small
to inverse my existence
into a fold like an empty pocket
so you wouldn’t have to see me
reach in and find me
I am not a piece of candy for you to suck
the color off of
I hid my face behind the world’s biggest sunglasses
because you said the sun shouldn’t shine
on filth like me
I made my face blank as an astronaut’s helmet
because this was an alien planet I traversed
The atmosphere did not sustain me
I am not a black birthday cake
with all the candles already blown out
I did not get to make my own death wish
I walked nearly weightless passed
Barnes & Noble, Payless Shoes, Mad Cow Yarn
I did not stop at Pinkberry’s to get a frozen yogurt
I did not walk into Menchie’s like a hobo
I did not pass go
I did not collect $200
I didn’t want to wake up this morning
but my dreams would no longer have me
I was pulled from my bed like a breach birth
by something bigger than myself
I didn’t want to live in this world
but I was provided a ticket to no other
How much of myself need I erase
so as not to offend you?
I feel almost as small as I can possibly be already
I feel like the period at the end of a sentence
I feel like I’m getting denser & denser
I feel like I may be coming back
in spite of myself
coming back more emphatically than ever
I’m growing into an exclamation mark
I’m sorry
I’m sorry
I tried to take myself off the board
when I couldn’t find a token that looked like me
I am as surprised as anyone
to see myself still in the mirror come morning
I no longer believe in a point of no return
I just believe in the return
I fear the only thing I had to fear was your fear
I fear
I fear
I was never as weak as I thought
Instead I feared what you feared
my own strength
It was your fear I felt, here, take it back, own it
I’ve taken it as far as I can go
It’s too heavy for me anymore
I was never afraid of myself
You were afraid of me
I was never afraid of this world
You were afraid of this world with me in it
I take off my helmet and take a deep breath
This atmosphere suits me just fine
Look how I step, so lightly, leaping great distances as if weightless
leaping from old life to new
leaving you behind
This world was always mine
You can bury me wherever you like
I won’t leave
I’ll always rise out of the ground
I am not your worst nightmare
Wake up
I was always the best friend I never had
Meeah Williams’s work has appeared in Otoliths, Phantom Drift, Uut, The Conium Review, Petrichor, Skin to Skin, Wilde, The Milo Review, Meat for Tea, Angry Old Man, The Ginger Collect, Former Cactus, Anti-Heroin Chic and others. She lives in Seattle, sews creepy “ugly” dolls, and tweets at pussy_nagasaki@pussynagaski