By Theo Jasper

Let’s start with something good. The summer sticky
    on our fingers, quarters sweating on the washing machine.

You were different from my friends at school, those rich girls,
    their hopscotch and honeysuckle. I was more like you,

the soles of our feet painted with a thin casing of dirt.
    Before puberty, I felt genderless. We were the same.

One summer day, we gathered coins from our trailers &
    rode our bikes to the gas station,

slushies were victory bells. This reclamation of self against
    my father drunk at home, his sad way of being.

I loved you. I think I did. Once, there was a tornado, and we hid
    in your bathtub. Behind you, there was a window.

The bright flashes of lightning made me squint. But you,
    you were facing me.

That night, a tree fell on my father’s trailer. A crack in the ceiling over the living room.
    Water couldn’t get through. He never repaired it.

I think, now, how the world is like this: a series of lightning strikes,
a sheet of frosted glass. And you,

    you, don’t make me say this,
      you taught me to grieve myself
on the trailer floor, how to exit the body
      and it’s called girdling, when a tree’s roots suffocate its own trunk

and I could not move and I could not look anywhere
    but the window behind you, always behind you
      and I knew then that we were not boys together but now only

      this: the flashes of lightning he could not see,
the crack in the ceiling that still hasn’t been fixed.

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Theo Jasper is a trans writer who finds his inspiration at the places where queerness and the natural world intersect. His work has been seen in journals like New Delta Review, and he holds a BA in Creative Writing. Jasper has a cat and two pet frogs, and can often be found wandering in the woods with his partner and best friend, Olive. substack.com/@theojasper