Jade Gaynor
Autolysis
Sound it out, tap
with fingerprint percussion, like a fruit,
the echo is dull, is clouded,
not clear, not ready––
Try to talk to it, tell it sweet things like a plant
or a cat looking. It’s not ripe yet.
breathe in, breathe it back
out to mush with the overripe sky in my room. Planes and angles visit
with visions of order, ignorant support.
they don’t know any better, they think edges and lines
are real, think you can trans a border but from only one side to another,
there is no understanding of spaces, no recognition that
every space is liminal––
They have to know it’s weird though,
right?
They have to see that beards have seasons, not goals?
I know the women getting laser with me know the laser doesn’t end,
know the pain is taking
new problems by the root every time they feel it.
I know this, they know this,
we know time doesn’t end,
we do.
Femininity
Some turtles snap
and people think they’re ugly:
rough skin, lumpy scales,
and beaks instead of teeth.
Ribbons glide so gracefully
in dances, inspire
even–falling–in their grief.
No one questions things that they expected,
and some demand the Unexpected bend;
but some turtles are graceful underwater,
and even ribbons snap against the wind.
Sitting in My High School Room at 34
Sitting in this bathtub
My eyes burn with pale-fire tears.
A story
About a boy
Who wakes up
In the body of a girl
Is open on my computer
And rings at a resonant frequency
In me.
I read it,
And I daydream
about the same thing
happening to me
And it’s so happy
And now I’m in this bathtub
Crying
without knowing why.
I must be feeling
Guilty
For failing God,
So I pray
Not for the first time
For forgiveness
And then I pray
For the first time
To be changed,
To wake up as a girl.
I beg and plead and bargain,
Offering anything
If only I don’t have to wake up
With a penis
Again.
I put my whole faith in it
And I feel something give
In my mind,
Some small click
That I know
Means God has heard,
Has listened.
It’s hard to describe how certain I am.
A person doesn’t risk their entire faith more than once,
And I know with that same burning hope
That tells me I will one day meet my perfect other,
That tells me animals exist,
That shows me how to live each day
Even with nothing in my heart,
I know
I will wake up
With the vulva I was meant to have,
That life is going to be set right,
That I can begin to dream
Of a future
Of goals
Of places to go
Of things to see and do
Of a new earth worth living in
And I go to sleep like never before,
Like tomorrow the world will be right
And when I wake up
I hold my eyes shut
I pray and lift my sheet and look—
And there’s the world
Broken between my legs.
The snuffing of my faith
Is a slow reverse:
All hope draining out
To leave a husk, a framework of fear—
God has me as he wants me.
My lot in life
Is to be in hell,
Fearful that my holy father
Will see my lack of gratitude
And condemn me to worse
After death.
16 years later I wait here.
Downstairs
my little sister
is having a gender reveal party
And I’m so happy for her
But will not join
Because I know
The entire time
I have been trying
not to cry because
I will never be pregnant
Or decide not to, as well
I was mislabeled,
Branded and stamped,
And my barrenness
And the violence of my gendering
Should not be the focus on her day.
But those 16 years were long
And fear is fragile.
When prayers go unanswered
Questions flourish
And other answers with them.
So I sit in my high school bedroom
And I grieve.
And I reflect.
And I inject the hormones,
And I celebrate my changing body.
Jade Gaynor (vi/she) is a neutrois woman. Vir work has been published in Delicate Friend, New Session, and VULCANALIA '21 among others. She is proud of the universe, dismissive of authority, and inspired by the sound of mourning doves when you're among trees with no people nearby. You can find her on twitter being entirely too human @messiarchy