Poem

Boxes — An American Sonnet

Thinking inside a box, how seldom she had done this, so not her style.

“Give me a box,” she’d say, “but make it so big I’m not aware it’s there.”
A box as big as the sky — or maybe as big as one’s native tongue.
Hers was a style so ungoverned, so unschooled it was invisible.
Forget poetic forms — she outsized the confines of biology.
At birth — given outward indicators — she was classified as “male.”
“Oh yah,” she’d say, “tell that to the handful of men who guessed otherwise.”
Men whom — in the thrall of lust — she’d let lead her to darkened alleyways.
Men who mouthed her mouth, lifted her dress, probing for what they’d never find.
She would try to warn them, but they were too drunk, too possessed to listen.
She was one of the fortunate ones who didn’t end up in the morgue.
So many are lost because they can’t be kept in well-defined spaces.
When we began drawing lines on the earth borders erupted in flames.
Imagine a finite universe and it will frighten you to death.
Forget the box. Toss it. The heart that came inside — keep that wide open.