J.S. Dorothy

BOYHOOD

We’d been scaling trees for about a month
when you decided to become a boy.
Not a tomboy but an actual boy,
and it was presumed I’d be one too.

First to go were your Pound Puppies,
which confused me a little,
then your Barbies, Tiny Tears,
the Polly Pockets I envied,

and instead we warred with your brother’s pistols,
wore camo cargos, stood with our legs
wide apart and considered
the benefits of a well-placed sock.

I told my parents; expected
my name to change some seven years
before it did, and you were Jace
or Corey, something American,

until you weren’t and one autumn day
you were back in your gingham dress.
In your arms a pink Cinderella
lunchbox, all sugar and spice inside,

while I, in trousers, squirmed.
Fingers wrapped around a Matchbox Ford Sierra
I was sure you’d like, but then
kept hidden, both hands locked tight.

J.S. Dorothy is a queer and disabled British-French writer. Their work has appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry Wales, Stand, and The Guardian. They live in York, England, where they are also a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of York. For fun, they photograph every cat they meet.

 J.S. said this about their poem:

Despite the prevailing stereotypes, childhood isn’t only a time of unfettered self-expression and playfulness. It’s also a period characterised by uncertainty, questioning, and a longing to fit in with one’s peers. Such experiences are even more prominent for queer, gender-diverse, and/or neurodivergent young people, for whom growing up may represent a dance between opportunities to live authentically and moments in which such authenticity feels threatened. The poem illustrates this dance; months of surprising freedom for one child coming to a close at the behest of another who, ironically, was the one to spark it in the first place.