Poems on Gender
(trigger warning)
TRANSITION
Some things hurt so bad you have to cut them out
You have to be like a soldier
Who digs a bullet out of their own flesh
Pinches the wound together
And marches on
Was it like that for you
If I had loved you better
If I had loved you more
You would have been stronger
Would that have made a difference
I don’t know
They told me you would kill yourself
My child was a beautiful baby
My baby is a beautiful child
A rainbow
One of a kind
This is what I believe
You came for my child
You took a rainbow and forged it into a knife
You were nothing but a hammer looking for a nail
How could you not understand that a rainbow
Is not a problem to be solved
It’s a rainbow
Did you wound my child or heal them
How can we ever know
You stormed in like a Jesuit missionary
Waving a holy book as if it were a sword of truth
Listen to the children you say
But you don’t know what listening is
It’s engagement, it’s giving back
Love is struggle – not war, but not surrender
You never give up on each other
My child was a beautiful baby
My baby is a beautiful child
A rebel spirit
A revolutionary
This is what I believe
The body is the foundation
When the body dies, the music stops
Physical transition comes with a lifelong cost
So of course you would try to avoid it
Not at any price
But that’s where you would start
How could you not understand this
We all sing the body electric
We all sing out of tune
Perfect harmony is boring
Rules have teeth
Rules have claws
But even the harshest rules
Make a beautiful sound
When they’re broken
We should break rules
Not bodies
Bodies are a fact
We give them meaning
We build on them
We can build whole castles
Out of fairy tales and logic
But the fact remains
My child was a beautiful baby
My baby is a beautiful child
Always and forever
