cautious nauseous awfulness

stumbles
and vicious headaches
 want to snack on this head but
I need it for these tests -
still haven't been able to sing freely for you.
It isn't nerves. Not quite.
My nerves are dangerous
but easily avoided
like dead snakes of power lines,
skin shed on the street -
you see them,
you can walk away.

But I don't know what it is
I'm now reckoning with.
...not true. I do.
The same insecurity
piggybacking me
hot air in my head -
when I fret and fucking fret
about each word I've said.
Not that I regret them
or feel they're not mine -
and it isn't this honeydrop body I mind -

I knew my name
about five years
before I was allowed to change it.
My parents still call me "she"
when i come home
as if we never talked about how that hurts me.
As if I never explained.
Or my explanation didn't cut it.
I know I'm not a girl
and need no one's nod to tell me that,
but getting pigeonholed
stuck in a sedentary childhood home
treated like an itch
and dismissed - it pulls the muscle
memory
and I'm aching, still -
despite facts, ice packs, time passed -
at my own hatred
of being misread.
 
I want to forget
about my clumsiness,
this reading myself aloud,
face growing redder
 each word I miss -
I fret about whether I've made you fret -
all of it stacks up
into an angry ant pile

and I wish I could just kick it away.
Get to the playground
and climb some stupid stuff with you.
I do.
I am literally sick
and so tired
of being afraid, but I think I've done
all the work I can. This aggravating tightness ain't my choice.
Worry writhes over my toes,
black biting ants and
I don't want to get it on my hands.

This is that nausea
I suppose I have to sit through
and take,
wave after wave
till it leaves me alone.