Before I Had The Words
When the only light
left is flame, I burn
to the end of me.
I think about Mulan,
somewhere between the flower
and the blade. It’s too easy
to say I am the moment
she sits and slashes
her hair with her father’s
sword. Each strand falling
like black rain against stone.
It’s too easy to say I am
the way she practices her man-
voice. Widens her walk like
gravity is still deciding how much
of her / not her to keep.
It’s too easy to say that I am
just the viewer.
Her / not her / him carrying
through the scene like a question.
This exit wound of identity blooming
like an uncurling fist.
That as a child, I didn’t notice her
chest binding, didn’t feel that flutter
in my belly when she pulled up her hair,
became Ping. I am sorry I am capable
of being what others least expect.
I mean there is something more
beneath my girl hands than boy hands.
Like how beneath Li-Shang’s disappointment
was desire, which walked the length
of Mulan until their clothes begged us all
to be good boys / not boys again.
Originally published in The Pinch
Video: Ezra Fox reads “Before I Had The Words” at Literary Speakeasy
Ezra Fox is a Best of Net nominee who lives and writes in San Francisco, CA, and holds an MFA from Indiana University. A Bread Loaf, Tin House, Lambda Literary, Sundress Publications, and Kearny Street Workshop fellow, and recipient of the Lili Elbe Memorial Scholarship, which recognizes transgender writers of exceptional promise, their work appears or is forthcoming in TriQuarterly, The Pinch, Fourteen Hills, Interim, and elsewhere. Additionally, they won the 2025 West Trade Review Poetry Prize, and was selected as a finalist for poetry prizes for Palette Poetry, Bellingham Review and Birdcoat Quarterly.
Oooh I relate to this one. Reflection was basically my theme song as a teenager unable to explain feeling alien in my skin.