Untitled Passing Poem by Is Perlman

Untitled Passing Poem

IS PERLMAN

I want to pass as transgender.

I want to pass as a liminal space sixteen years of wishing for something else.

I want to pass as palpable confusion a boy with earrings the strangers I’ve made eye contact with on the train.

I want to pass as redemption for every second I’ve lived before this one as forgiveness and possibility a hunger for the future that I formerly did not know trembling that grew into a roar waiters calling me sir without flinching my voice feeling deep in my throat handsome unafraid a force to be reckoned with departure from who I was before but also a return to who I have always been, standing in the door frame neither entering nor leaving the glass that separates your fingertip from its reflection a bridge between my limbs self-assured a deserted island on which I am the only inhabitant a masterpiece of my own creation.

I want to pass as manifestation, as embodiment and documentation. I want to pass as letting myself breathe.