White: Outside of Color
Nikk Wassermann
i.
Tonight a salt piano next door plays a
black body of tears and white
noise threatens to become me, a bride
unable to choose which
way to walk down the aisle
and meet the casket. The roads
built here, lead her
home—the phantomera—every land
ghosting the autumn leaves turning
brown. Dust is here
every bit falling
snow that won’t melt
in the rain.
ii.
This morning I woke up and chose
this body
again the boy
16 years shoulders hunched
to protect the breast, large
tender. Gender is everything
no one looks for between
words or on top, inside the mouths
of everyone but babes. How young
is better for the mark
of the first transgression but I am half in this
world, blue blankets
pink bedroom—half outside
of color : summer fruit
trees to climb, the continuing
reticence of heart
into chest.
Nikk Wasserman is a recent graduate of Brandeis University with a BA in English and Creative Writing. They were awarded the 2014 Ramon Feliciano Poetry Prize and the 2015 Grossbardt Poetry Prize for work on their honors thesis and have been published in The Adirondack Review and Laurel Moon. Their favorite things are outer space and the ocean.