Recipe for Finding Yourself
(2024)
Ingredients
∞ moments of revelation
Several naysayers
6-7 positive childhood experiences
1 caring adult
A will to live
Preparation
1. Be a child, realize who you are. Accept it without question.
2. Listen to the hearty naysayers’ laughter when you tell them.
3. Run away from yourself repeatedly, gather experiences.
4. Share with a friend and trust them as you would those who once
made you feel loved.
5. Live and keep on living. Revel in your inescapable being.
Dorothy
(2014)
You can fall in love with anyone:
a fool, a shell, a coward—
and run along all right as rain
until the clouds are long lost shadows
I wandered far from home that way,
on handsome strangers’ arms,
and plodded on as we got hammered
on all the fallen fruit we gathered
Then I awoke from poison slumber,
though admittedly hungover,
better, faster, smarter, tougher—
a wiser, more courageous lover
I’d never choose to click my heels,
even if that tale were true.
Still, I dare to dream sometimes
of Dorothy before the storm
“Dorothy” first appeared in “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” Issue #3 of NonBinary Review