pre-broken was the way
of being a man that i was given
shards that cut as i assembled
under my father's eye
a man was so brittle a thing a
cracked doll prone to disassembly
into limbs of grief and violence
and in fear fled i to fluidity:
 the more ductile
the more survivable.
a man needed respect even
unearned: deference set the glue
of this blown egg prone to
 shatter at a touch
of rejection to my claims
on reality: to be a man
meant to know the world so
to feel made wrong meant
to be unmanned
in furious implosion.
was this masculine power
to discover oneself strapped
with bombs of anger only
after the detonator pressed?
i escaped where i could
 primarily boyishness
though with a shadow of wisdom
 i could not place til
more comfortable as a woman too.
so slowly have i learned
that better ways of being a man
 are possible, that others have seen
this in me when i could not in myself:
so i look up from the first stair
 scarred but hopeful