Once, I was confident in being a man.
I wanted kids, God, a blonde woman with a name
easily found on gift store keychains. I saw myself
as a tardigrade, sack of flour, uncouth collection
of unrecognized cell-blocks. Whose trans body is a house
without a hacksaw—I have read gospel before,
this sounds like what my grandmother tells me
gospel sounds like, something I have not heard
in the space between punching bag, ungloved fist,
cut-up fingers, hairy thigh, mustached lip, bearded mouth,
and so on. Is this gospel? How long did it take to tap into my skull,
drain the liquid from my heart? How long does the plane curve
before it ceases to be shape and becomes something more?
I dream of shaving my body down to a doll’s neutered blankness,
of guillotining my manhood. There are people who have nuanced takes
on masculinity, who feel secure, like men. I watch them
from the other side of the fence. My mouth open, tongue draped
across grass like a picnic blanket. I don’t exist here,
I want to say. There is a space between the walls in which I will live.
It won’t be weird. Why would it be weird? I dream of a strong man
penetrating me vaginally, and there are several complications to this.
Sometimes my guillotine dreams turn to dreams wherein I am a bird
eating out a tree’s core. Sometimes I’m afraid I am afraid / of me,
I echo, I push around meat and bone in my face.
Something guttural erupts like a howler monkey’s screams.
I scream like a howler monkey and claw like one, too, if they claw,
do they claw? I feel unsure. I feel violence churn in my stomach,
pitchforks in hand, lit torches, a monster to kill or set free.
It is hard to tell where the sun explodes and where no one
gives a shit about how I dress. I am afraid of being exposed as myself—
is it violent to want to be seen? My reflection blurs into: a haze of smoke,
pink strobe lights lining the ceiling, full volume Carly Rae Jepsen,
warm wood benches separating the gays from the girls
and doing a bad job. Can you look with me into a future
where I do not masturbate to the thought of evaporation?
It is obscene—a fan blade rotates through my intestines, shreds them
into small, red ribbons, now pinned to my skull
like prizes onto donkeys. My smooth head glitters with rivulets
of blood, christlike, absolved of everything permanent.