Refusing the Fixed Grammar of Self

They stepped beyond the frame of “he” and “she,”

where language tried to lock the soul in place,

and moved instead in forms that could not be

reduced to one permitted human case.

The towns demanded answers they could keep,

a stable word to fasten to the breath,

but what they met was neither shallow nor deep

in the terms they used to sort the living and the death.

They wore no title that could settle cleanly,

no social script to make the body plain;

they lived where identity exists between the

expected categories minds maintain.

And still they spoke, not as a contradiction,

but as a presence refusing to divide;

as if the self resists the strict inscription

of all the names it’s told it must abide.