In the Bathroom Mirror, What God Has Joined Together

we meet here, in this world-not-world, this
in-between, this liminal space, this place

of release, of letting go, of changing,
where the water falls near, scalding

hot & loud enough to drown in
quietly. you wait for me, just beyond the steam,

where I once was, you wait
in the neck of a t-shirt taped to my hairline,

the rest of it fallen around my shoulders,
these cotton-white locs, your cotton-white locs,

twisted to the side slightly for a side-part style,
left sleeve left hanging over my right eye,

your left, you move it away with
a steam softened hand, brown as mine,

you smile & I smile & we’re
misty, fog softening the rest of you, shaving

me, hiding the boy behind the woman,
we dance, a pair

of folded boxers stuffed underneath the chest
of the shirt still on my back, how

I’m giving you breasts, I’m giving you
breath, I’m giving you life &

I live & you live
until the water runs cold &

my mother calls from the other world,
says I’ll leave more unclean than I came

but mother, I told you, I come here to meet
a woman!

just don’t ask her name, I may say my own
& what good would that do

but cause confusion? there’s
no need, I’m not her, she’s not me,

& I am & she is &
this means nothing but that

the body is not enough.
never will be, not completely.

& I am fine, knowing this,
knowing, mother, that you were right,

knowing mother you are,
that this life is frivolous, tiny,

that after, there will be so much more
than this nothing, & heaven will be

everything
man & woman

& I
could never have touched

with these flesh-
imprisoned hands.

Isaiah Gardner (he/they) is a queer writer and undergraduate student studying neuroscience at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He was born and raised in the small town of McComb, Mississippi. His work has appeared in Variant Literature, 3Elements Review, and Aura Literary Arts Review. He and his work can be found on X/Twitter @IsaiahGard04.