Nancy Boy

This is a poem about binding with tape. I wrote it right after work: I was working night shifts as a server and all I was thinking about that evening was my desire for my lover, for his body, for his transness.

Cleaning tables

All night I lick your upper lip from the inside

The thickness: a petal, the peel of a ripe apricot, a beetle vibrating before taking fly

Busy doing something I’m not doing I work

With my hands touching something else

Your chest wounded, scratched, bound

The secret places where skin becomes soft therefore holy

Your skin

Allergic to anything, sight and touch, not glass but crystal

You want my hands cold

How tough

For you to battle a body that bleeds, that opens, that makes you do something you don’t like

For me to hold down your wrists, stop

I caress the table (christ), I caress the forks (christ of the scars), I caress you (christ of the scars, protect us)

Too near too beautiful you fall from my eyes, eluding me, crushing me

Love is tough

You and I love with closed fists without having hands

Nancy Boy is a worm: God isn't finished with them yet. Italian and based in Rome, they write about their growing pains, queerness, addiction, recovery and spirituality mainly through poems and flash fiction. You can find their work on @esse.rena.