I will spend my forever painting you sunsets
so resplendent in their myriad of hues
that you’ll learn to dream in technicolor
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Trans people often say we feel as if
we are trapped in the wrong body.
It is a metaphor we invented,
so that language (and people) will let us in.
My cries are muffled by the ideas I was taught. “Stop that,” becomes a phrase I wear like a piece of jewelry that never comes off.
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Every time I bow out,
and shut down.
I give you the power
to speak up,
to speak over,
to speak for,
me.
If I could talk to
Seventeen-year-old me
I wouldn’t.
Instead,
I’d sit crisscross applesauce
Empathizing
I hope you discover the world can be kind
That you stake out a place to call home
And take off your coat planning to stay awhile
This river is a living thing, ice in chunks moving toward me, pulling me into
its mutable monotony--always becoming what it was without ever being the same.
the girl searches for her politics in every crease
of his body and thinks this is what feminism is or
could be but the best part is that she will never
see him again can forget his name his hands the fact
that he likes Leonard Cohen too
Last night I dreamt you loved me.
Were you coming or going?
I could never tell.
I buy strawberry shortcake popsicles.
Ten of them, but they only last two nights.
I think about how I could have been born during slavery.
Or in 2050, when there’s no ozone.
If I have an urge to cry, I don’t.
i dress the darkness
in doll’s clothing
with a crown of dusty, pink death.
“Promise me that or nothing at all”
Maya Angelou said to me
this night when I am reading poems
instead of writing them.
it’s hard to talk to mama sometimes
we both hold the pain
like a pretty cupcake
but with nasty icing
My first cry was heard
by the Fronds that fanned my mother
The sun painted my skin–
The color it should be.
If I could talk to
Seventeen-year-old me
I wouldn’t.
Instead,
I’d sit crisscross applesauce
Empathizing
Where do I need to be?
I'm longing
Calls of direction
I cannot hear
Why is it wrong
To “take it to heart”
My heart is all I have
All that lives when I die
you, woman,
are something to behold.
not something to be held down.
do not forget this.
Tonight I’m neither girl nor woman
I am simply clay.
I surrender before my potter
As May does to the sun