gender in shades of orange

i. the best names

1. color

2. fruit

the best names tell the truth the second they're spoken,

no one has needed to clarify: an orange orange.

i wanted

a name as truthful and immediate and i wanted

he & him and

more.

so embarrassing to want anything at all!

to admit anomaly,

publicly piecing together self and new name (who met softly and easily

separated orange slices that already knew each other).

.

ii. the myth of the masculine chest

two orange-red branches stretch for my sternum.

yesterday the surgeon said i shouldn't let sunlight touch my chest for six months. the scars, he says,

burn

very easily.

i puncture a thickskinned orange as i peel it, nails bitten too far, juice burning my wrecked fingertips. a little hurt is worth the victory: to eat this wondrously redundant fruit, to be called brother instead of sister, to have this chest.

.

iii. the myth of the feminine ribcage

if the forbidden fruit was citrus

eve would have handed her husband ruination & perfection in one neatly sealed golden slice.

what springs from the ribs of a fallen daughter? from the curved ribs of an orange’s insides as they separate from the rind? from the daughter’s transgression in a garden, shirtless and unashamed, the orange flash of monarch butterflies mirroring her joy?

.

iv. fruit bowl paintings

who else

has been forced to take themselves apart and rebuild prettier? and who else

has burned their own flame-colored sunset to an old life? and who else

has seen themselves all the way through, from truth to untruth and back again?

the work to paint my life the way i want it--

shades of oranges--like traffic cones, like sweet potatoes, mangoes, like california poppies, dying leaves, like striped cats--

unrepeated and unrepeatable by anyone else.

.

v. the highest praise

in the morning my mother

sits in the blue dawn with a cara cara and its peel cradled in a napkin,

lifts a piece to me.

orange? she says. it’s good. not too sweet.

.

vi. ROYGBIV

this is where i fit. what i want, deviations and all:

not too sweet.

called the only name that is mine.

generous-shared out of love

in the garden of eden, a hospital parking lot, at our dining room table , a glowing fruit passed from hand to hand, orange veins

beneath translucent skin--

a piece of living heart, unrepentant

and bright.