Androgyny

So you woke up holding it—
the aura of possession
which surrounds a single thought.
Not apperception,
a halo, an obsession.

You couldn’t comb your hair
without turning to stone. You were imagining it
even under the plumbing: water steaming up
your glassed-in skeleton.

With his hands between your legs
you dreamed the gold wings of the parenthesis

and saw the lenses of his eyes
as center of the afterthought—

but you were wrong. And wrong
to love the sun’s blunt
easing in through the screen.
They beat you because you let them.

But seeing him in the parenthesis of sun,
in the gold of the museum,
you thought: she is my brother

and you saw the dream physiognomy,
the dream muscles, the whole new breath.

And you were right
and you didn’t know it

as no near-human, womb-consciousness
ever knows the moment before
it is about to be.