You talk ecstatically
about your future
vagina. (Insert my
response here.)

Interrogative sentence:
How can you sound the same when you’re not?

I want this
To seem real.
I buy you perfume.
It lingers above
your musky scent,
camouflaging
nothing. The effect
is stranger.

This is a serious conversation.
There will be hormonal shifts
and tissue inversions.

Interrogative sentence:
How can you be a girl if you don’t even want to brush your hair every day?

A woman, I meant a woman.

Shaving your beard
is the first surgery.

I photograph the phases
assuming we will want
to remember.

Confession:
As much as you assure me that they will understand I’m convinced your parents will disown you.
My friends all say
they saw it coming.

Your gender dissonance was a train.
I was standing on the tracks.
The barriers were down.
All the signals were flashing.

I could choose to see it that way.

Confession:
The thought of telling my family makes me angry. It makes me angry at you.

Shaving your legs
takes two hours
and afterwards your
skin looks like
you’ve been stung
by a swarm of bees.

By coincidence I had
just learned the words
transphobic
cisgendered
privilege.

Pop quiz!

To move through
a sentence is to
take a stance,
develop a philosophy.

My boyfriend is a woman.
False

My girlfriend is a woman.
True (but misleading?)
My partner is a trans woman.
True (enough)

Confession:
Sometimes I think I’m losing my attraction to you. Sometimes I think my ability to desire someone is dependent on my ability to fit them into words.

Language is,
like the sun,
an imprecise method
of illumination.
It ties our hands
because it is
defending itself
from
over-simplification.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines woman as:

1. An adult female human.
2. A female servant or subordinate.
3. A wife.
4. A female lover or sweetheart.

Convincing lie:
Boys have a penis. Girls have a vagina.

I want to say I learned this in school
but who taught it to me?
Did the teacher write it on the blackboard?

The American Heritage Dictionary defines female as:

1. 
Of or denoting the sex that produces ova or bears young.
2. 
Characteristic of or appropriate to this sex; feminine.
3. 
Consisting of members of this sex.
4. 
Designating an organ, such as a pistil or ovary, that functions in producing seeds after fertilization.
5. 
Bearing pistils but not stamens; pistillate: female flowers.

A woman is a female
and a female is a woman.

Dictionaries don’t create
a framework of
shared understanding.
They assume one.

The movies
teach us how
to define
trans women.

Trans women who pass are deceivers-
dangerous and predatory.

Trans women who don’t pass
are Pinocchio, only the blue fairy
never comes. We pity them.

Interrogative sentence:
How can you identify as a woman if you don’t identify as feminine?

To identify is to commit to
a self-fulfilling prophecy
and affix it like a label.

To identify is to provide
a set of instructions
for how one is to be perceived.

To identify is to
call out an answer.

To pass is to appear to be a member
of a more privileged class.

This may be the first time in history
anyone was attempting to pass
as a butch lesbian.

Such is this world
crossed out atop
the page. Throw
out the definitions.

Convincing lie:
Women have two X chromosomes. Men have an X and a Y chromosome.

Biology bickers with existential experience.
Later sends flowers and an underdeveloped theory
of the relation of sex to brain chemistry.

I don’t use pronouns
when I talk about you
to new people I meet.
I want everyone
to remain flexible.

Confession:
If you are the girl I secretly believe I have to be the boy.

We’re walking through the dark dark woods down a yellow road.
I’m chanting to myself:
I don’t believe in the gender binary.
I don’t believe in the gender binary.
I don’t believe in the gender binary.

Sometimes I fantasize about us getting
queer-bashed. In my fantasy I’m your
hero. I step in front of you baring my fists
and the harassers back down.
This always happens in a supermarket.

Factoid:
Did you know that every 3rd day a trans person is murdered?

Confession:
I don’t think I’m strong enough to protect you and I think a day will come when you will need protection.

Your complete absence
of fear in the face of this
is as surreal as anything else.

False dicotomy:
Either you’re much braver than I am or you don’t have an accurate impression of what we’re up against.

Confession:
I love you more than I have ever loved anyone.

What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

Confession:
I honestly just wanted a normal life.
Can you ever forgive me?