If I had claws I would use them to carve wounds
like red open mouths on my chest
Where my talon sliced two graceful arcs
And I pulled away what I do not want.

This is cliche.
My professor told me so when I tried to write this poem years ago.
Every tranny fag wants to rip themselves apart.

I found a surgeon who had a scalpel instead of claws.
1306 grams of flesh removed, laid out in my clinical notes:
Healthy tissue, benign. But skin gray-pink like I’m halfway dead.

I don’t regret what was taken but I miss the urge
To peel my own skin back with my nails.
Now I’m too scared to do my own injections.
Is that cliche?

\

I used to tell myself bedtime stories of my own life
The fantasy of adulthood: children, husband, house, happy.

I would always kill myself off
In some tragedy so I could step into the role
of my grieving husband and play
out the rest of the story from his point of view,
In his body.
(And somehow I never saw that as a metaphor)

Now, I try to tell myself it’s for the best
I’ll never have the vision I had for myself when I was 16:
The marriage, the children,
The secret body in my mind.

Now, every date I go on ends with
“Im sorry but I could never fuck
Somebody with a body like yours.”

\

I’m an endangered species –
But 41% of my kind will kill themselves.
I know that exact number
Because all you have to post
Under a picture of a woman
Is that number.
It means not that ‘I think you should kill yourself’
But ‘I know you will do it.’

They hate women so much
They forget I exist.
I could be grateful for that.
I should be grateful for that.

\\

In the locker room, I don’t change quickly.
I don’t keep my back turned.
I want people to look at me.
Exhibitionism or defiance?
Two different kinds of heat.
I want both. I want to be seen
And for the sight of me to spark desire
But I want the sight to spark anger, too.

There’s solidarity in dysphoria
In the gym –
All of us who think our bodies aren’t right.
Testosterone’s a steroid:
Schedule three drug, same as ketamine.
Gym bros buy it black market.
I always have to wait while the pharmacist
checks and double checks the prescriptions,
eyes refusing to stay on me.

My body’s not right, or my brain’s not right?
I forget I have a body until I look in the mirror;
I forget until I cut into a raw pork chop
And am reminded that I too am made of pink meat-
And I sometime wonder how much force
It would take to penetrate skin and how easy
The knife would glide through fat and viscera and liver.

I know, at least, the force
Required for a needle to stab
Into my thigh each week.

\\

I wish I’d never wanted claws in the first place.
I wish I’d been happy being soft and gray-pink.
A fantasy of how much happier I would be
If the desire had never been there in the first place.

I wish I could have this body without fighting for it.
I wish I didn’t need needles and claws and puncture wounds.
I wish I could give up.
But then what will I be?
How they want me,
How I hate myself.
I hate this poem, too.

\\\

In May I drive to my childhood home
Because I’m scared to be alone in my apartment,
Where the train tracks run behind the property
And I know the fence around them has fallen in places.
I walk into the house and fall on to the couch
Crying, my face in my mother’s lap
As she asks what’s wrong, what’s wrong
But I won’t tell her. She makes me
A hot chocolate and says of course
I can stay the weekend.
The next day I drive back to my place
For clothes and my toothbrush, my hands
On the steering wheel shaking
From holding myself so so tight for 27 years
And I tell myself, “you can’t kill yourself while mom is still alive”
My dad, my sister, they could move on eventually
but my mother never would.
I can’t kill myself, I can’t do that to her.

In July my mother is dead.

41%

\\\

Here is how to be a tranny in America:

Be sure.
Be sure enough to tell yourself

Then your friends, then your sister, then your parents. Be sure enough to call the doctor, be sure enough to tell the therapist, then the second therapist, then back to the doctor. Be sure enough to draw the meds from the vial, to push it into your skin hard and fast like a dart, to depress the plunger – once a week every week forever. How can you be sure?

My fingers still shake on the needle.

\\\\

Sometimes I think if they were to take it away
I’d let them.
I’m so tired.
I’d let them strip it all from me.
And it wouldn’t be my fault.
I could give up and it wouldn’t be my fault. I’m so tired.
I can beg and plead for what I want forever
But they don’t want to give it to me –

Is it cheating to leave instead of staying to fight, to refuse?
I’m so tired.
What do I owe to who?
I’m always so tired. I don’t want to fight.
Don’t I deserve to not have to fight?

\\\\

Cleaning my desk I found
A blue post-it note
Where I had drawn a diagram

             Kill Self

And on another post-it
I had written, verbatim, what a man said
In gay book club as soon as he said it
because it pissed me off so much:

          I’m grateful to have read these insights as a cisgender man
          this broadens my understandings which I’m so grateful for

He said it after I read a poem about a trans man
And his same desire to cut himself open.
I regretted it as soon as I said I would read it,
Thinking, why the fuck did I choose this one?
Will they know now? Will they know? Can they tell?
Why else would someone pick that to share?
To broaden my understandings, which I’d be so grateful for?
Cisgender man, he’s quick to point out.
I am just a man – can’t I exist without the asterisk?

          *not really

\\\\\

I got an email from my Congressman while sitting there
Procrastinating doing my shot by taking photos of my cock –
Is that cliche? Has that ever been done before?
He’d hate to know what I was doing.
Shouldn’t that fill me with enough anger to pierce the skin?
But it doesn’t. I’m only ever angry at myself.

\\\\\

          Get mad, get mad

          College Instructor Put on Leave Over Zero Grade for Gender Essay

‘We’re All Just Winging It’:
What the Gender Doctors Say in Private
                                                                 Texas Tech restricts race, gender teaching
Allegations against Washington gender-affirming surgeon stir fears of backlash for trans patients

                                                                 A desired return to rigid gender roles undergirds
                                                                             ‘pronatalist’ ideas, UNC researcher says

          Trans kids lose lifeline: NorCal’s largest hospital to end gender-affirming care

DOJ orders prison inspectors to stop considering LGBTQ safety standards

          If you’re not angry you’re not paying attention.

And I’m not. I’m sitting here not getting my meds anyway. Can’t get my hand to push down. I keep trying to take myself by surprise. But I can’t. I live here too. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.

\\\\\\

I’m not allowed to kill myself and I’m not allowed to be alive,
So what am I supposed to do except what I am doing,
Which is neither.

Am I supposed to wait for them to kill me first?
What, then, are my talons for?