poetry sideblog

they/them ⚧︎

[marble-moth]

it's like knowing you're going to die.

in the few months leading up, you spend as much time with your family, giving as much love,

as much laughter,

as much care,

and as much warmth as you can.

before everything breaks down, you watch one last sunset, play one last game,

and tell them you love them one last time.

what you will do tomorrow will be irrevocable, and it will be entirely your fault.

but you can't endure staying static any longer.

you will kill their daughter,

and something else will take her place,

and they will never forgive you.

tonight will be the last; you know.

so you will go outside with your siblings

and eat dinner with your parents

and play card games with your grandparents

and hug each and everyone one as tight as you can,

hoping with all of your heart

that they will still view these memories as bittersweet.

[marble-moth]

outgrown

lately i've been feeling like my soul has outgrown my body.

i'm 18 now.

legally, i'm an adult.

emotionally, i'm still a teen.

but physically, i feel

prepubescent.

i've never felt like my body gave me the wrong puberty, perse, in fact i was excited, especially since i was a late bloomer.

and even as time went on, and as i began to despise my chest and my fertility,

i still felt like a girl, and i was excited to become a woman.

but now,

the walls are caving in.

this box is so much smaller than i'd thought

and no matter how much i want to escape,

i do not have the funds to purchase a shovel

and i do not have the autonomy to dig

so i am left gnawing away at the walls in the dark

with a rusty, tiny spoon, barely making a dent.

and i try to scream,

but my voice

is too

small.

[silene-stenophylla]

I go to work (a poem)

I go to work and my coworker tells me

“If I ever saw a trans person in real life I’d kill ‘em”

I go home and testosterone dries sticky on my chest and

Tomorrow I’m goin to a punk show and screaming as if he’d seen it

I scoop a black widow into my hands and cradle her small body to safety

I know she’s heard the same

“If I ever see a spider, I will kill it”

And walking away I see a wasp who’s predominant diet is black widows and I wonder if I should’ve taken her back home

I want to take a lot of girls back home, where I can watch and keep them safe

My work is full of black widow killing wasps and even more brown widows, which may look like they’re in the same boat but they do just the same

Sometimes an ally is just another pair of teeth

A man I don’t know shows up at my work and smiles at me with that smile men wear when they’re going to denounce you

And before I can even feel guilt for that assumption he tells me about how much I don’t know what I’m doing

And how the man before me was better.

He didn’t see what I was doing. He was just walking by. Hardly knew the man before me either but he knew he was a man

And he can’t know I’m one or I’ll end up a widow under someone’s shoe.

When I’m in danger and cannot help it a giant hand I cannot control carries me to my family’s house

Thinking stupidly that it’s put me somewhere safe

And my dad talks on and on about how much he loves Trump

And I see that little man on the TV and hear in a voice that is half his and half my dad’s

“Day ONE in office I will undo all of the Biden era lgbt rights”

And my dads house is a warehouse full of wasps and brown widows

And I crawl home to safety and dream of dogs dying under wheels and of my loved ones meeting my work life and both those images have the same amount of blood.

I have 5 songs stuck in my head at once and it’s 95 degrees and just as damn humid

And I know I heard once that manhood is pain but

I think what they meant to say is that manhood is blood

Cause I’m hearing the words and instead of dreaming of peace I imagine blood covered hands and think “better you than me”

And instead of laughing off another man’s joke like I used to, nowadays I just get angry

And I know the phrase “wolf in sheep’s clothing” the same way I know I’m “a girl playing dress up as a man”

Because the sheep are safe in their majority with their guard dogs and their fields

But the wolf is starving and being hunted and wearing that wool like it’s anything close to a shield

And holding back it’s fangs like they could ever see it as any less of a predator just because it behaves

And I think if I had to kill to keep what I’ve got then maybe I’m more okay with that than I used to be

I think of my friends that I love and of that black widow spider and of smiling strange men

and I know that if manhood is pain even after all this, then womanhood for me is nothing but death