These Lines Are Gaps.

You live in a small house,
|||/ shared a room with your brother John
who shares your height but
not your personality, glowing
and fading
|||/ dwindling into a hole you keep
|||/ in a gray tin box in your chest.

If you were a woman
you would go plain face
|||/ clean slate
spic span but
you wear no pearls with your plaid and
corduroy,
just curls that you own

curls that you hone each morning
with water an a towel
||||||/ naked and void
in the shower that smells
dark and damp like a man.
That looks like the underbelly of a toenail,
that has walked through grass and dirt and bone.