by Robin Percyz

To all the beautiful, badass, bulldagger, bull-dyke, diesel-dyke, stud, stone, and soft BUTCHES:
It is for you that I plump my lips and femme my face.
It is for you that I crop my tops and ink my arms.
It is TO you that my eyes flash, freeze, focus
a symphony of silent lasers screaming, 
I see you.

I see you at the grocery store, the gym, the train station, and nearly everywhere
in Brooklyn.  Your visibility reverberates in percussion 
like a megaphone beating
masculine sweet nothings from your jawline, your lineup, your flannels, 
your carabiners and your BIG
BLACK BOOTS. I see you.

Sometimes I feel like my queerness is hiding, that I am like air kissing
the faces of my people without them feeling me,
invisible. 
But your pupils roll, roll, roll
out a velvet red carpet calling me back.
Please never stop looking at me the way you do.  


I know that being yourself has seemed impossible,
like being in two places at once.
Or three.  Or four, depending on the way the shadows cast you
in anything other than the binary.  I see your widened
shoulders, your rigid gait, your shortened fingernails.
I hear your voice lower, lower, lower 

to its knee on the ground like the day you hope to shine a ring upward.
Or maybe it’s a key
to the Uhaul van, a coupon for Home Depot, 
or the day you adopt a
kitty and grow your family
of feline and non-human babies. 

I know that sometimes your chest aches from stretching
to conform or to pass.
Sometimes from curling inward
to shrink and hide.

They say you are too masculine, not man enough, or unwanted,
pulling and tearing gender from both arms, 
an endless tug-of-war.
I know that your torso is a landmine and the past pain is buried underneath

by people you don’t know, some you do, and mostly yourself.
I know you beg to open with tears that tell secrets,  
to be afraid, be human.  Your mere existence is an act
of daily revolution, resistance, and courage.  To risk your safety, to put your foot

out the door and hope you will return home unscathed.
I know this is a burden you wear like a ten-ton trench coat. Though you grab it
daily like a handkerchief,
I thank you and I see you.

I salute you for wearing yourself proudly now like a Purple Heart
for saving your own fucking life.  Over. And over. You wear it not
like a costume.  You wear it like a skin you pushed your way through
his world in. Like a three piece suit, tailored perfectly to every inch of your body.  

Crisp and pressed.  You wear it tough, boyish, sporty, rugged, handsome.
I look at you with the curtains of my eyes wide open, framing you
like a work of art.  To allow your beauty to swallow me, devour me, and please
Dear God, SEE ME back. I see you.

I will always let you go in front of me at a public restroom. 
I will ALWAYS correct someone who misgenders you.
You’re butch as in she/her, they/them, and any word that chooses you. 
No one puts baby in the pronoun corner. 

I will cook you all the meals and lift heavy furniture
because gender roles are for ding-dongs who ask who’s the man, dykes?
I will ferocious-femme-hoist you on my back and grunt, I’m the daddy!
You are butch in multitudes and I honor all the races, sizes, and decades

of iterations that have transformed the way you butch.
I thank you for filling your plate with the meat and bones
of masculinity that are valiant and dignified, and leaving behind the scraps
of chauvinism. Blessed are we for you, who reconstruct masculinity 


and sand the sharp edges
of its misogynoir.  You know that you needn’t run
to open the door when she can beat you to it
in stilettos. But still, you try. 

You are a tender butch, a new love language.
We thank you for fighting the dying breed,
the extinction that is the butch. 

Robin Percyz (she/her) is a queer writer from New York. As a member of The Society for Menstrual Cycle Research, she presented her piece, “Boxing and Bleeding” at their Conference in 2011 with Gloria Steinem in attendance. She has been published on literary journals/magazines and in print on Ink & Marrow Lit, En*gendered Lit Mag, Tension Literary, Writerly Magazine (Paperbacks & Co), and Tulip Tree Pub. She was a competitive amateur boxer for four years and now strives to help others feel visible through her work.