by Sarah Gina Jones
midway airport
midway between Chicago and my parents
a great industrial shithole of puckered cement
my entrance and escape from home.

This is when my mother drums
up the conversation politely muzzled
between teeth for five long days
with only one slip in between

Do you have to wear that chain wallet
to the restaurant?

For the first time we have managed to smile
through the jaws of difference
because in the end, surrender
was the easiest path of acceptance.

In the procession of brake lights
that stretched in front of the car
like a sentence never finished
she breaks her oath

needing to know about men?s underwear
discovered in the laundry.
It?s more comfortable
I say, cringing at the thought

of her folding blood streaked tighty-whities.
But now she needs to know about my girlfriend?s
intimate apparel and I think, you kinky broad,
knowing this conversation

would never be asked of my straight siblings.
But before I tell her
none-of-your-*****-business
I blurt out: girlie panties with bows.

She accelerates midway into the airport
tears ready to take off along the runway
of her face.
C?mon, I say, We?ve had such a nice visit.

Do you want to be a man?
I just want to understand who you are.

And I wonder
if I?m supposed to be that person
to make it all logically sound
to spread my skin so thin

that it becomes transparent to show
how the blood flows.

I don?t explain that I feel like fag
trapped in a woman?s body,
neither male or female
butch or femme.

What is there to explain
when there is no where to meet midway?

I drift to daydream the shadow life-
the one not lived--
where I am married with kids
doing dishes when a shrewd sensation

bubbles up out of the soap opera
into a caption
for the traditionally impaired
that reads: This is all a lie.

I grab my bag from the backseat and try
not to apologize,
No mom, really,
I?m just trying to be me.