how a boy becomes a sculpture 

if you stay still for enough moons
the artists will come carrying stone.
to be a muse is to be dead
in the mouth of the maker. 
gender is all about death. about preservation.
about how to store enough jam
for the winter. teeth fall tonight
after a blanket of snow. teeth angels
& teeth men. i always wanted
to be adored in a way that compels someone to
inflict my likeness onto rock. 
they start with my face. they work 
with spoons. at the fair each year
artists come to carve a masterpiece out of butter.
golden little family. i have watched my reflection
in a pool of cream. i have slid a knife
through warm butter. there is a moment
when everything shifts. when you can feel
that they have captured someone 
real about you. in that way gender
is so random. i will be shaving my face
for the thousandth time & the birds will sing
& i will think, "of course i am a boy."
then the same when i am eating
a blue popsicle & it is the hairy-legged
part of summer & i feel in my gut,
"i am fading thing." there is a garden 
somewhere where my skeletons go
after the sculptors are done. i stand in
a pose holding a canopic jar. 
in another, i am running barefoot & boyless. 
when the artists are done
they never thank me for modeling,
instead they eat the crumbs
from the stone. kneel in the gravel. 
then, scramble away like spiders into the forest.
their own genders glint like halos. 
i take a picture to reassure myself
that i really saw their skulls glowing.