I would go through it all again for you
a hundred times
but I do not think I would still be me
when it was over
on the two angels that visited me at work
matching white coats, dirty from being on earth too long; a kaleidoscope of color inside the younger one’s hood
they are mean to each other, but that’s just how angels are. it’s all they know. the taller one rolls its eyes— all of them— every time the younger one can’t make up xer mind. the younger calls it a slur in a language no one can speak.
more than a few dollars short for the wire cutters and sealant they need, so I hand them a twenty.
the taller one insists it doesn’t know me, I don’t see how that matters, so I tell it, “it’s a gift.”
but the word “gift” feels like the word “offering”
a last ditch attempt to appease a god who ignored me all my life
maybe this is a last piece; a last peace, a treaty.
and echoes in my mind whisper:
“be kind to strangers
lest they be angels in disguise”
and I would rip myself apart for you,
crack open my ribcage and let you
take whatever you wanted.
but you have been teaching me
that you do not need me to,
that I do not need me to.
being trans is a bit like
running hands over yourself and thinking
“i cannot wait for there to be a scar there
in the place of something else”
to know that all that will be left is the mark
a tangible reminder of how the creator wronged you
and how you made it right
the screaming that bounces around the inside of my skull is back to grace me with its presence. guttural and keening and feral.
i take another sip from my soda can and pretend i do not hear it, because to let it out into the world, where it would transform from visceral agony to banal noise, would be worse than enduring it silently. at least this way i can still feel it. at least this way no one else has to.
the wind keeps reaching through the open window of my car. she is trying to rip my heart out from under my seatbelt.
I wonder what she wants with it.
I am not a girl,
but rather a boy in the way
that I am burdened a daughter.
disappointingly so.
red wine drips from lips
like blood and
god knows it’ll never
be enough and
each hit burns like
it’s the first
you think you just might
die of thirst and
dorian, you’re gonna die
but pretty darling,
so am I
so you and I,
we’ll go down together
you’ll destroy yourself
and I’ll haunt you forever
nothing left to say but
beauty does not stay and
paint it fades and dries and
time it always flies
so hold me on the way down,
and do me no harm,
i cause myself enough injury
from day to day, love
god will never love me the way he loves you,
and that is all the assurance I have in this world.
suspended in a bubble of hiraeth
the tear frozen on my cheek
in the subzero sunlight,
my home is a person,
and they are too far from me
I am holding my bloody heart out to you, my hands stained with red from holding it for so long.
and while you are not the person who ripped it out of my chest,
you are the person I am trusting to take care of it.
maybe you can put it back in for me.
was it not enough that you stole
my heart, my lungs, and spine?
i do not have the stomach for it anymore.
I stood dead at a grave that was not mine
a friend of a friend long since gone, though
killing me only now.
grief is as death,
is as life,
is as humanity.
we mourn the empirical fastenings
of those who came before
most now dead and buried in swill;
beheaded
as they had their time, so shall I
as they loved, so shall I
as they died in a thousand ways,
fractals spinning through space
through the human mind
eternally soaring in mist and
touching heaven for but a moment
before all, all is lost
and down they fall into the black
window of obscurity;
so shall I.
i know what i want now
i didn’t before
i want cold mornings and leaves that crunch under our feet.
I want warm blankets.
I want a house in the woods.
I want clean air and sunshine and my own means of living.
a hand to hold, someone to confide in
I want to be loved; but I most of all,
I want to be loved by you.
I used to think you were a smart man
now I’m not so sure
in fact
I think you told us several times
when I was younger
that you were anything but
you scared me too much to test that
I hope the people who live in our old house
look at the dent in the freezer
that you nearly broke your foot making
because you wished you could have done
it to me instead
and wonder how it got there
and soon enough they will discover
the lines I scratched into the wood
into the walls
little traces of anger
it fills every support beam,
every wall,
every floorboard like rot
spreading
consuming
devouring
I think I shall never forget the first time
seeing my mother’s new name
on a package with mine
I think she is getting better.
so am I.
“i’m sorry,” I whisper desperately.
i’m sorry for feeling too much.
I’m sorry that it spills out of me uncontrolled, violently.
i’m sorry I was never handled gently.
i’m sorry nobody ever taught me what love is.
something is rotting.
the smell pervades the house, wafting through the halls, seeping under the doorframes.
it’s subtle at first. easy to ignore. i turn on a fan and soon enough I’ve gone noseblind.
it’s been three days. I found a little mouse dead on the floor. it’s small. too small.
the smell gets worse. the fan is on all the time now. I put perfume under my nose to block it out. eventually, I grow numb.
a week. there is no escaping it. I have looked everywhere. it has stained all my clothes. It is here, somewhere, the source of it.
it has been months. I cannot leave. I am weak. it affects me constantly.
something is rotting.
it is me. it has always been me.
how do i prolong love?
it’s as if I poured gasoline on my heart
lit it up
and expected it not to burn out in an instant.
I want the kind of love that smolders,
the kind that may not be passionate,
but ever present, ever warm, ever burning.
come lie with me in the embers, dearest.
we can curl up on the coals
and burn together.
it is slowly getting brighter outside.
the horror clawing at me as my eyes snap open,
terrified of images that are intangible
and cannot harm me any longer.
it is slowly getting brighter outside.
one of these days,
you will ask me to hold you,
and I will crush you in my hands.
not through any ill intent,
but out of never learning to love
and never learning the art of being gentle
there are so many scars on my body, but i could not tell you where they came from. not because i do not want to, but because i do not know.
my lungs.
they are too small for my body.
they have not the mass to handle each shuddering breath, each desperate gasp that begs “please, please, let me express something”
my body.
it is too small for my feelings.
it snaps and groans and stretches to try to accommodate the maelstrom within my chest, to no avail, so the scream claws its way up my throat and out my mouth, hurling insult and injury towards anyone nearby.
and I stand in the aftermath,
in the rubble,
and wonder what I have become.
i am laying flowers at the grave
of the man who killed me;
and there is nothing god could do
to stop me now.
dear god,
i have grown since we last spoke, but i have not forgotten. i will never forget.
the silence will be etched on the canvas of my memory for all of eternity
your world, this world, that ebbs and flows so beautifully
the passage of time is a rich work of art that so few understand
and as it spins, the things that die create new life
flowers grow among the bones and
leaves sprout from the ashes and
i am still here.
i wish to die like a star, glowing and gleaming and destructively beautiful.
can I feel everything at once?
it is how I feel when I see you, my beloved—
grappling violently between
the edge of euphoria
and the pit of despair.
surrounded by a kaleidoscopic miasma
of dead things and broken dreams
rotting lies and bandages
slathered with nitroglycerin
oh, my love,
let us burn down the world together
and as we stand on the precipice of the ashes,
may we burn down with it