GENDER ENVY

Gabriel Valentine

When I see him,

the half-italian cappuccino king

with his square jawline and wide cow-brown eyes,

slight mustache and cheek-length unkempt curls,

I want to be him.

I want to texas chainsaw massacre this motherfucker.

to wear his face,

scalpel-slice it from his skull

and stretch it over my own.

I want to smash my hands into his ribcage

to squeeze him a new heartbeat

and gnaw the marrow from his bones,

like chewing on a chicken wing.

I want to disembowel him,

unravel his intestinal tract,

and wrap it around my neck

as a faggy little scarf.

I want to hollow him out

like a high school frog dissection,

pinned-down wrist crucifixion,

and lay in the cradle of his flayed corpse.

I want to zipper myself into the morphsuit of his skin,

to be his insectine parasite, a whipworm infection in his bowels,

cysticercosis taking over his brain, to drain each remaining part of him

and fill his gaping holes back up like a symbiotic sludge.

I want to be him.

But when I see him, he just hands me

my eight-dollar oat milk latte,

and I stutter, spill a little,

blush up, and shuffle away.