Not Confused, Just Beautiful

In Minneapolis I worked at a bakery and walked home every day
smelling like brown sugar and lemon peel cupcake frosting.
When I found him, he was feeding bread crumbs to the swans-
black trench coat, dark hair, an open book of Rilke lying on the park bench
next to his knees, the kind of man who’d write beautiful pickup lines
on the backs of bar napkins in an effort to take a woman home
and just lie next to her, no sex, no touching.
He bought me a Mountain Dew at the corner store and we tossed
coins into the fountain, wishing for separate things,
koi flicking their shimmery orange tails in the water below.
Four weeks later he packed up to go to Houston,
where he worked as a graphic designer, and every so often
I’d get posters in the mail with reasons why he loved me
markered over every inch of sheet plastic.
Two years after, he met me at my apartment
and we undressed for the first time in the dark, our clothes
dropping to the floor like orange rinds,
white skin glowing in the crack of light from the window.
When he was revealed to me, I saw the breasts first,
small like bundt cakes, and then the narrow v between his legs,
the smooth absence of hair along his wrists and thighs.
I thought you were a man, I said,
and he tapped his head. I am HERE, he replied, just not here,
and pointed to the rest of his body.
Now, even after the breakup a few months later, after
the shouting matches and worries about infidelity, the nights spent
drunk at a bar looking for “real” men to pick up, I am still proud
of myself for the way I folded him into my arms that night,
and made love to him the only way I could,
despite the fact that one half of him
didn’t match the other.