Choreo-Dysphoria

by F.T. Rose

Image credit: Dan Calderwood on Unsplash

Class One:

The dance expressed through her girl body murmurs I perform. It evokes candy floss flirtation and head-cocked hair twirls. Our hips move for visual consumption by an amorphous “him”. My curves appear designed for her step sequence, but they resist the interpolation. Mind and structure split. I am on the ceiling watching myself struggle in the spotlight of amplified femininity.

Class Two:

The dance expressed through his boy body announces I am here. It evokes steel beams and black pepper exclamation marks. Our thighs tighten and stretch, stomping frisson and fury. Hollering backwards and forwards in time, we move with the moon and jump off the sun. Gender is rendered moot; that we are alive is enough. We breathe the energy like dragons. I recognize myself.

***

F.T. Rose

F.T. Rose (they/them) is a queer psychotherapist, writer, and retired professional dominatrix from Toronto, Canada. Their poetry has been featured in Bitter Melon Review and Lodestar Lit, and they have pieces upcoming in Abraxas Review, Elixir Verse Equinox and others. F.T. lives for the psyche’s dark dusty corners and opportunities to transmute figurative base metals to gold.