color contact lenses & transformation 

eyelid peeled back
i sat on the floor of my bedroom
trying to place the color contact 
onto the surface of my eye.
a holy blue. electric blue.
it wasn't that i wanted
blue eyes-- it was that i wanted 
unnaturally blue eyes. junior year of high school
was a year of transformations.
i wore cosplay outfits 
in my bedroom while doing mundane tasks
like answering emails or 
organizing my bookshelf. 
it was a unique task to take a picture 
of myself with my phone;
no forward facing camera i had
to contort, hold the phone above me.
sometimes i'd imagine being two people:
a photographer & a model. their conversations
unspooled from my head. is anyone
not lonely in high school? i let 
whole animes play out between
a few nights. i dreamed of new ways 
to have a body. i saved images 
of cosplayers on my desktop
like a photo album or a destination.
is anyone not lonely now? this poem
is maybe not for them. sometimes i
dressed up as boy characters.
sometimes as girl ones. i used to think
it was about gender but now i think
the practice was about going
elsewhere. becoming anything but 
this body. i brushed my wigs 
carefully: the red one, the blue one,
the yellow onw, & the white one.
i tucked my hair under wig caps
& touched my rounded head 
in my full length mirror. i wanted
the contacts to fit so badly.
my eyes watered, dripping down my face
& leaving little trails in my foundation.
i couldn't get them in no matter
how many times i pushed & pleaded with 
my skin. the contact was thick &
would not stick to the surface correctly.
never before or after have 
considered so closely the texture 
of my eyes. two marbles 
in my face. when i gave up 
i put on my person clothes 
& took a walk up the street. it was 
humid june by then & all the grass
was dry & dead. i told myself
when i got back to my room
we would try again, yes & this time
they would fit right into place
& i would see myself in the mirror
changed.