GHOST SYNTAX by Joni Thomas

(after the snow, after the silence)

I left my body out overnight.

It filled with snow— pressing in,

like quiet in the dark just before it breaks.

In the morning, a man scraped it clean and said:

  “You’re beautiful now.”

I want to become the weather that kills him;

The rain that pulls him apart.

They keep asking, What are you, really?

As if gender is a ghost story

  with a punchline.

Sometimes I answer with numbers —

  long division, something always left over.

Sometimes I answer with glass —

  held in the mouth,

teeth kissing its edge,

  cracking like a promise I’ll never make,

shattering before it can speak.

Ghost Sketch

Joni Thomas is a poet and photographer based in Richmond, Virginia. Her work has appeared in Transfixmagazine and Anarkiss, exploring themes of transness, roots, and reclamation. Through both poetry and photography, she traces the intersections of identity, memory, and place.