Boy Girl

Boy Girl

Baby Girl was often lonely but seldom alone.
This shallow feeling had persisted for oh what,
some thirty years, back as early as grade school,
as early as when she knew the difference between
boys and girls. The boys teased her endlessly,
as boys will often do, for not being like them,
acting like them, being them. She remembered
letting the captain of the football team cheat off
her exam in Earth Science, an exam about conifers,
tall pines that produced seeds that grew into
cones. In exchange, he agreed to protect her
from those monsters that lurked around the corners
of hallways, a maze she would have to navigate
in order to arrive safely to her next class. Having
a guardian was a lesson she carried with her
even today. Looking back at that boy, she could
still relate to him, the one with the recessive gene,
that freak of nature and science, a mistake,
an aberration, the last to be picked for basketball.
Instead, a new woman had been born on
Her eighteenth birthday, and she never looked back.
These lessons, lessons learned, necessary lessons,
would serve her well, and who she became, the woman
who had arrived, survived, would have knocked
all those childhood bullies down with one punch,
one solid punch. None of her friends, except Raccoon,
knew that Robin was her real name, a name that could
have just as easily been born a girl rather than a boy.
She had been reborn Baby Girl, even if her driver’s
license picture reflected those childhood taunts. But
no one presently knew of this boy, and she kept him
hidden, out of sight, Still reflecting, she sat in the
center of a party in her honor, smiling, feeling completely
and utterly alone.