My mother told me that, when I was just born,
Wystan would hold me to his uncovered breast
and I would gnaw, fruitlessly, on his meager tit.
Wystan was strange in that way.
I felt at times that he didn't know the boundaries of his sex.
His own clothes were made of a finer, flimsier material than mine,
always silk or linen, and the colors were bright, eye-catching.
He would often wear our mother's bathrobe, even her nightgown
and sit about the house reading women's magazines.
He would use her creams and sometimes I could smell the warmth of talcum powder on him.
Then I noticed even my father wearing my mother's bathrobe or slippers.
Now I think it was merely odd, this casual exchange of clothes.
But at that time it made me uneasy:
I knew I was the only boy left,
soon to be engulfed by
a household of breasts.