When I was ten my dad took me to a barber shop and I turned into a boy with a buzz cut. I loved it. I touched my head and said, “Dad I’m a peach!” I turned into a boy who wore skirts some days. He wore one black converse shoe and she wore one pink converse shoe.

“Of course you still look like a girl,” my mother said. “It’s in your face.”

I had asked her because walking up to the bleaches at a Phillies game in my purple skirt and baseball camp the usher had said, “Right this way sir.” I was actually worried that I wouldn’t mind if someone called me “sir”. I wouldn’t mind them no knowing if I was a boy in a skirt or a girl with buzzed-cut hair. I didn’t correct them. I felt elusive. I ate my mango water ice proudly in the stands.

I played with hair gel between my fingers some mornings and others I peppered my thicket of brown hair with glitter or a white bow hair-band that faded to a grayish shade from use.

Sometimes during karate practice I would imagine what it would be like to kiss a girl. I was scared that I was going to be gay.

Sixth grade girls moved to the other side of the locker room because they said I watched them change– which was ironic because I was too busy fumbling with my contraption of a sports bra and worrying about them seeing the subtle fold of my stomach over the waist band of my gym shorts.

Some days I wanted to change in the boys locker room or just in the bathroom stall alone to figure out for myself what I was.

I don’t always know what I am but that applies to everything. I’m a poet and sweet potato chef and an explorer and a moth.

I am mismatched socks and one pink and one black converse shoe.