trace by Steffan Triplett

the boy i have a crush on

is throwing ass on someone else

at an outdoor bar that’s somehow brought out all the black queers

in this small city. the boy i have

a crush on is not all that interested

in being a boy today: wearing black stockings, a black pleated skirt

tanned flesh peeking through. i watch him. i try not to watch him. i try

not to try not to watch the two of them. i might turn red when embarrassed

when i have a crush on someone whom others think i look like.

the last time a crush like this survived i was in college: in proximity to a boy

who sometimes got called my own name

& i sometimes his. i hated this doppelgang—

even worse the coincidental attraction— but loved how, in a darkened hallway

away from the party, i traced his insides. i remember most the shine

of his slick molars, his back roaring up against the worn, painted wall.

the boy i have a crush on will never know it; he is one boy among many

& i one boy among many others sprawling under this shining sun.

i imagine the pair leaving together retreating to warm, painted rooms

one tracing the other, beautifully.

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STEFFAN TRIPLETT is the author of the hybrid memoir Bad Forecast (Essay Press, 2024) and the essay chapbook Constraints (DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press, 2024). His recent work appears in Obsidian, Foglifter, Poetry Daily, and It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror (Feminist Press 2022). He is the Managing Director of the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics and a Teaching Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Steffan has been a fellow for Canem, Callaloo, Outpost, and Lambda Literary and has received support from Tin House, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Blue Mountain Center, and Advancing Black Arts Pittsburgh. He was born and raised in southwest Missouri.

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