Featured Poet: Stephanie Williams

             ​Dane CC



To 15-Year-Old Me at the Tegan & Sara Show Before I Knew I Was Trans

There’s a reason this makes sense to you.
One day you’ll give that reason a name.

You’ll recognize her in the mirror:
curly hair down to her hips,

smiling like her lip piercing
forgot how to apologize.

You closet rockstar.
You’re almost there.

The first time you hear your chosen name
on the lips of a best friend you’re going to fall 

in love with her guitar. Find yourself 
running red lights in every city, 

screaming along to the first song 
that made you feel bigger 

than your hometown.
You’re almost there. 

A trembling phoenix in some starlit bar.
Scarlet dress ablaze under the stage lights.

A stick-n-poke spitfire brandishing
your busted-up six-string

like a can of pepper spray.
You’re almost there.

Chain smoking in a motel parking lot. 
Eager for another sunrise to spark
 
your lucky like a lesbian crush whispering
pretty girls don’t light their own cigarettes.

Aching for another twelve-hour drive 
to the next show. Belly laughing 

at every billboard threatening hell 
to the girls who riot in stiletto heels.

Blowing kisses at their reflections
disappearing in the rearview.

Gaining on the horizon.
You’re almost there.

Stargazing in a Texas desert. Your glittering heart
spilling poem after poem in perfect cursive.

Writing love songs to the girl
you met back in Portland.

Writing love songs to the girl
you always knew you were.





She’s Running Home

with grass-stained cargo 
shorts and dirt under her nails 

to tell us all about the ladybugs.
Laughing like a grasshopper.

Bloody knuckles clutching
wildflower bouquets.

Strawberry freckles
and a rat tail.

Missing tooth.
Tracking mud.

Still daydreaming
about tire swings.

Pockets full of skipping stones
too good to throw away.

Boasting with both hands about
the biggest crawdad she’s ever seen.

A stubborn storyteller smiling 
through scraped knees,

refusing a Band-aid
until she’s alone.

Cul-de-sac warrior,
friend of the honeybees,

the daughter we will never have
growing up to be just like you.





My Hometown Translates What I Couldn’t Tell You

When she says I’m sorry I’m late 
what she means is she takes the long way 
into town to avoid the roadside grave 

of a drunk friend, still waiting 
for him to come home.

When she apologizes again
I’m sorry if I’m a little off today
it’s because she cannot look away 

from the windchimes left hanging 
from an oak tree in her mother’s backyard

after the bank took everything. Cannot forget 
how they would shimmer like used needles she found
playing barefoot in the creek,

how there were so many small things
the floodwater forgot that year.

When she asks can we go slow she’s trying 
to warn you: there are cicada nests sleeping 
inside her, old habits waiting 

for your April weather. She knows her scars
will bloom too quickly beneath your hands.

Your Appalachian charm will break her 
open, like it always does, into a thousand 
little mistakes she will struggle all season

to bring back together. When she says I feel 
safe with you, she wants you 

to know she used to float down the shallow 
Potomac on her back with her eyes closed 
and ears underwater, pretending 

she was dead for an entire summer, knowing 
that at any moment if her body grew 

tired of this balance she could grasp 
the riverbottom with the tips of her toes 
and escape back home.

When she finally says yes she means 
                 you are the river.
​

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Stephanie Williams (she/they) is a poet and musician based in Denver, CO. Her work has not been previously published. Her poetry explores the joy, grief, and trauma of queer and trans lives.

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