Born of Star Dust
By Lizzie Ferguson

On the twelve hour drive I am a constellation of selves. Comets crash into versions of meI thought I lost in deep time exploding memories of the home I can’t quite return to. The one at the top of the hill. Across from the horses. Years later, that is, Now. I drift on a tether to the space ship shaped car.
Still dark the stars outline a ram. A sacrifice sheep falls into a black hole somewhere after the last Ohio rest stop. A swan emerges after the rain. Once an ugly duckling now she’s slick and handsome. Just how I thought I would grow up to be. Mile 800 I am a gas giant. A swirling stomach from a road trip diet. Then- I can’t quite make it out. Ah. I am a small bear who hunches herself into the backseat scared of her family’s anticipatory tears. The hunter appears when the 4 am stars rearrange again. I shoot a bow and arrow into the liminal sky through the shifting clouds. Or I’m on the front lawn grass belly up learning the names of myself from the boy who works behind the salad counter. The road curves around the Appalachian hill eight hours into the drive and I am the Big Dipper. I scoop up my own limbs with my ladle self and stretch them into the driveway as soon as we park.

Kleptoplasty
By Lizzie Ferguson

Sacoglossan sea slugs steal the process of photosynthesis, masquerading as pseudo plants. I am ten million times the size so why can’t I too defy science?
Be a boy today, live off the sun shirtless in my back yard. The fossil record dates them to the Juruassic era. I think, everything was queer in the Land Before Time.
There lives underwater a whole species of these kleptomaniacs, thieving algae like it’s contraband. I mirror their furtive moments by sneaking into my roomates closet, borrow his baseball hat, his loosest jeans.
No one can agree if these sea slugs belong amidst the kingdom of cyanobacteria. Though I doubt the scientists asked them their pronouns.
Elysia chlorotica are intersex creatures, able and willing to mate with anyone in their species, often penetrating each other simultaneously.
I think of getting a strap on. Something to latch myself to the way these slimy slugs cling to algae to control it, bite it, suck its contents out to survive.
They are. I am. Not human. Only plant. Mostly animal.

When Gender Dysphoria Arrives But I Must Finish My Chores
By Lizzie Ferguson

I have something hard in my hand
and that’s all I can think about.
Is the broom handle a ballerina bar
or a hockey stick? Either way
I lean my body weight in. Make circular arcs.
One direction then the other. Pivoting in stride.
Turn to the other side again.
I’ve always been indecisive.
Then I am spinning. Only spinning,
not really sweeping. Moving the dirt around,
My mother would say. Picking up dust
and placing it nowhere.
Letting it cascade around me.
Now I am coughing.
Only coughing. Expelling toxins
and belief systems
the world jammed down my throat.
The handle is red as the period blood
I’ve prayed away for decades.
I feel a blister forming.
I stretch my knuckles.
Crack. Crack. Pop. Roll
my shoulders so they ripple like waves.
They don’t. I wish they did so I imagine it -
mighty me - a devastating tsunami
crashing onto shore.
In my dirt pile - gender roles
I lost somewhere last week,
the cats litter between tile crevices,
my desire where it fell under the stairs,
a blueberry that mysteriously rolled
across the length of the kitchen,
defiant.