what it must be like to transition like

ripening fruit—to grow more in tune

with one's gendered rhythm, each passing day

a new identity—to pulse with delight at

a world that sees you living—

i long to come out like his

sticky-sweet becomings yet instead

i am purely a quandary—i don't

want to call myself nonbinary because

that implies that the binary is real,

 

the rest of us lingering outside it

like small children screaming to be let in

to a building they would most likely wreck—

don't want to call myself transmasc, always,

because i'm not a dude, because most cis dudes

have conspired in AI-driven group chats to

make my life hell—and don't want to call myself

a lesbian, except around trans people, or someone

 

somewhere, without critical thinking skills

will think i'm a TERF. i want to transition like

a carnivorous plant, shining with verdant colors yet

at least a threat to hierarchy—transition like belongng

is real—like there's a label out there without

some kind of baggage, some kind of implication—

i want to be transmasculine in the way a butch dyke is—

 

except without ascribing to the existence of gender—

i want a wikipedia page for every label complete

with a moodboard rather than an explanation—want to

cite Monique Wittig every time i share my pronouns—

want to abandon gender in the forest to be devoured

left to decompose, to grow.