Love Poem To My Overalls
By Noah Arhm Choi
That covered my breasts like they could
be belly fat and not a lamp I want to break
for how it shines its light. It had real pockets
and not ones made to never be opened or used.
I could wear them to school or the store or the movies and still
be called cute or at least ignored.
I’m not supposed to say there are things I miss,
seeing that it took a divorce, a job that hated me but had insurance,
a therapist to get here. What if I lived
in a world where fear wasn’t a rear view mirror
changing how fast or slow I drive. What if
I could be feminine and still be safe.
What if I could be feminine and not less
of the other things I am.
Sometimes, I love what it has given me.
How to hold a baby without worrying I will drop them.
How to read a room and know when it’s time to leave.
How to cook for a party, pour drinks, laugh, clean up.
Hold someone when they cry and have them not regret it.
Forgive my body for being a body—temperamental,
mysterious, stubborn. People need me
to be legible as a man or woman so they know
how much space to give me, on the sidewalk,
the meeting room, whether to flirt or fawn, ma’am or sir,
listen or talk over but sometimes I miss
being one of the girls, in a gaggle at ease,
miss going to the Korean spa and marveling
at the different bodies around me, naked
in the hot tubs cause I have breasts like the others, even
if I hate them, even if they sink me slow. Now, when I go sweat
or cry over the most recent hard thing, I skip
the showers and baths, anxious at the stories
I hear, wanting it to be a Tuesday like any other Tuesday.
What makes you think you can have
what you have left behind? What makes you think
you can get back what others say you never lost?
When at last you can love what you have come to hate,
you will have killed the cop in your head, wear overalls
that hang low and not remember what it hid but all
that it let you do—climb trees. Carry
a hammer and nails. Laugh
like there isn’t one thing
you would change.
Noah Arhm Choi is the author of Cut to Bloom, winner of the 2019 Jack McCarthy Prize. The 2026 Lambda Literary Poet-In-Residence and Valentines Editor for Honey Literary, they received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence, and their work appears in The Adroit Journal, Split this Rock, The Rumpus, Foglifter, and elsewhere. Noah was shortlisted for the Poetry International Prize and received the Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize, alongside fellowships from Kundiman, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Adirondack Center for Writing. They serve on the Kundiman Board of Trustees and currently work at NYU Metro Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools. A K-12 educator of fifteen years, they work to embolden the intersection of education, activism, and the arts. Their second poetry manuscript is forthcoming from YesYes Books in September 2027. Follow Noah online at www.noaharhmchoi.com or Instagram: @noah.arhm.choi
Photo credit: Savannah Lauren
