CW: coercive relationships, implied dysphoria and implied transphobia

Say we’re sat cross-legged, however many of us, arms twined
watching Lizzie McGuire re-runs where she has her first kiss

on our Switch, her heart broken when Ronnie says later–we all repeat–

We need to talk, in different voices.

You are impersonating
Ronnie deliciously: the small fry
of recurring pubescence, the seriousness
injected into velar consonants, the thawing pause before Lizzie…which lasts as long as
he could want. Lizzie and he interact for
only one episode: he likes someone at a distant New York school, says he doesn’t know if
now is the time for he/Lizzie to stay exclusively best

boy and girl, sensitive-like. Dear Lizzy
Ronnie is

a paper-route–chucking the Times at your picket fence–in the mid-2000s
like Clark Kent–stupid
glasses, himbo broad–still

working at a print newspaper in 2020.
We are trading our tertiary characteristics
like playing D&D: we roll

dice to determine our perception score; we grip one
another
compliment you on your diamond smile/endless patience with the cis-scum
lying one on top of
the other like newly born kittens developing eyes, very still.