the flowing strands of time

in the beginning, there was—

mulan cutting her own hair
becoming one of the guys
first time i saw in a movie
someone who looked like me

from a distant space colony
learning to fit in on earth
i gazed at the red space ranger
and his beautiful long hair

i proudly showed off my
first few armpit hairs
in middle school, but friends said
gross, put it away

in ancient china, men wore it long
in the house of flying daggers
kaneshiro takeshi rocked that hanfu
and fierce flowing black hair

manga, anime, jrock showed me
even more possibilities, and yet
for many years, i continued to stand
outside the fence of masculinity

before coming out, i kept my hair short
which was how the man i was with
liked it, and after we parted ways
i saw my true self in the mirror

for the first time, let myself explore
how i wanted to look, unbound
by societal expectations and
constructs of binary gender

if i could travel back to have a chat
with younger me, they would see
a genderqueer human with long hair
beaming at them, saying

let it grow how you really want
your hair, art, queerness, go on

in the beginning, there was

already a lovable you
carrying the many strands
that will extend all the way
to a fierce flowing queer future