pr nightmare

each august i plan a sound bite for my dentist
because my mom taught his children 25 years
ago, the school where she discovered me
thanks to a free test from the faculty lounge.
we tend to diagnose most absence as
infinite— my first gender the ultrasound
misread. in between my suicide attempts,
we couldn’t speak to each other, so i took
to wandering the streets without sidewalks,
though it hailed once and she picked me up
before i had to ask. all that year in a mask,
i sat through group therapy in a park during
sunset three times a week, in those plastic
chairs that fold up into slim bags to be worn
on one’s back, passing the long second hours
whispering my lamentations into a lantern,
counting the dim stars of the altadena sky,
wishing only to ride home in silence and
wake up in the driveway of a different
house. i can’t remember what i said to him
when i was 16, resenting the project of
brushing my teeth, anything that reminded
me, i was alive, there was another fire to put out.

*

Matthew Toth (he/they) is a writer and editor from Pasadena, CA. As a student at Kenyon College, Matthew has worked with the Kenyon Review and Sunset Press, a student-run publisher of chapbooks. His poetry can be found in Tinderbox Poetry Magazine, Exposed Bone, and Vagabond City Lit.