transgender modes of grief transmission.

in first semester i wear my zeal
on the edge of my teeth but now
i let the voice of reason carry me
over treetops and ledges and right into the streams.
somewhere else there’s a man and he looks like me
except he didn’t need to fight the world the way i did
somewhere else there’s a man with my face and
he was born to be me but he isn’t me
he was born to be glorious but he’s a bastard
or something like that, and this wasn’t
supposed to be a poem about privilege
but almost all poems are ultimately about privilege
or about existing, which in itself is a privilege
by which i mean, literacy
privilege, accessible literature
privilege, eloquence
privilege, self-actualization
fucking coincidence but you can slot that under
privilege if you want
university
privilege
still being alive on transgender day of remembrance
privilege
or maybe privilege isn’t the right word
not when we’re all persecuted
you could probably pin it all down
on sheer luck
i am not a man in a woman’s body, i am a man’s body
in a sheath of nonbinary and i curve everywhere
a woman should but i am not a woman
because i perceive myself
the way i want to be perceived
which means, skin and bone
and isn’t every single poem just a tribute to
being around to create poems
being hurt or being happy or being in love
which essentially means you are hurt and you are happy
we are all does on the sidewalk looking at the arrows
and saying to the hunters, hey
keep the taxes quiet for a minute,
listen, are you sure you want to kill me?
somewhere outside, a man wears a body
designed for me that somehow
got lost in factory management
but it’s fine because
i love my transgender body.
in first semester i think i am cis
but i am aware of gender in the way that birds are
aware of the sky and salmon are
aware of the stream
which is almost the opposite of
privilege
it’s living on the very edge
of the fangs of existence
and i’ve always bitten down
with all my front teeth
making it to sixth semester is a
privilege. in a few months if all goes well i will
graduate and if i’m lucky enough i might
get into my dream university and that might be
privilege again or maybe just a coin toss in my favour because
if i don’t make it out of here i will be just another
statistic, just another person grieving and
swallowed by grief
swallowed by violence
swallowed by hate
transgender and brown and all the way down
from the south asian south
i only wanted to write a poem about pain
about how when one of us dies
all of us
feel it within ourselves
ripples
in the pond of the transgender collective
bullets
in an area of common assembly
blood that belongs
to everybody in the vicinity
it’s not empathy as much as
a personal wound
that hurts each and every one of us
because none of us are safe until
all of us are safe and
we are all afraid of
becoming statistics
while the most privileged groups make tables and
print out charts the most privileged groups
do nothing and watch.
the most privileged groups
could never feel collective love
the way we do
or collective sadness
collective pain
collective grief
which is why i think that poetry is a little like
the song, “the winner takes it all” by ABBA
except that the game is rigged each round
and some of us lose no matter what the stakes are
gambling our energy each time we demand respect
all the batteries in our bodies
always running dry
always running empty
always running.
somewhere out there, a cisgender man
is wearing a body
that should’ve been delivered
to me

he can keep it.

 

 

maybe there’s venom instead of blood in my body (but hey, i’m still alive, and that’s all that matters.)

 

Here’s some art journal stuff that I put together in light of someone who called themselves my “best friend” acting as if I was irrational over being upset about being hurt and asking for help. All images are royalty free, and all words are mine – except for the album art (Broken Bells) & Marina’s album The Family Jewels + the lyrics from certain songs, which are in the yellow font.

I’m just, honestly, tired of people who call themselves my friends but don’t respect me, don’t respect my boundaries, whatever.

She sort of implied I was heartless or something for cutting a friend out of my life after being friends for three years, but truth is simple – I’ve been through abusive & toxic relationships before. I need to look out for myself. Three years of best friendship barely compare to the 8-ish years of codependency featuring me and the girl I was in love with, who (likely unintentionally, but she did this all the same) was perpetually putting me down, invalidating my struggles, questioning my worth, etc etc. None of that compares to having faced abuse at the hands of your biological parent. So. I’m not really sentimental when I’m being disrespected.

It says a lot about my self-worth and growth, I guess, that I’m in a stage of life now where I just. don’t have time for people who don’t value me. I’d much rather have no friends than have tons of fake friends.

This was surprisingly fun to do, and i might just….. do more of the same in the future.

guess who did finally did it? here’s a video thing to accompany my gender poem. happy trans day of visibility for those of you in more western timezones, lmao. it’s 3AM here. anyway – you know what youtubers say – like, comment & subscribe! tbh tho you don’t have to do any of that stuff, just watch this and tell me what you think, maybe tell your friends if you liked it ❤

rebels.

i.
you called me last night
a poem on the edges of your lips
something you wanted to press against me
like an imprint.
it was a poem
about a monster
and a small girl screaming for help
but no-one knew
whether she was calling
to
on the behalf
or because of
the monster.
you said, softly and solemnly
that you’d never considered
so many possibilities.
i laughed and said i believed in all three
isn’t that a contradiction, you asked,
and i just held the phone
silently
wanting to scream out a no
but not daring.

ii.
the next day my parents sit me down
at the dinner table
to discuss my future.
do i want to be a mathematician
or a poet?
they leave the question hanging
dangling
like a loose thread on a slashed silk duppatta,
or a scarlet parasol
caught between the branches of an oak tree
choose, they say
what will you pursue
maths
or literature?
i stare at the floor
wanting to scream out both
but not daring.

iii.
i’m surprised
when it rains through summer
i want to call the weather forecast man
and ask him
why he called out for the sun
during a thunderstorm
instead i call you
but all i can hear
is static
never mind, my head is clear.

iv.
i want to run through a forest of cherry blossoms
i want to sit on a rooftop and stare at the stars
i want to be able
to do everything
all at once
without them saying, choose
without people screaming that
i’m indecisive
i’m confused
just a jack-of-all-trades.
but what i am
is just
a versatile sky
you are the only person who i know
would understand.

v.
road trip? i ask you
you laugh
life is a road trip, you slur back
i know you’re just drunk on it
so i shrug,
and say,
let’s go get one then
we’re both thinking of the boy in physics class
who’d never tell us what the time was
‘time for you to get a life,’ he’d say
oh, but now it is.

vi.
i’m with other friends
we’re at an ice-cream parlour
people are taking sides
chocolate or vanilla
it’s my turn.
i shrug
i like them both
the crowd gasps
two sides of an army unite in their common disgust
you can’t like both, they say
ice-cream flavour wars have been going on
since the early seventeenth century
how dare you stand
in between two sides of a battlefield
they jeer.
i know i’m standing in no man’s land
just because
i like two contrasting flavours of ice-cream
and i don’t want to fight this war.
i grab a raspberry ice-cream on the way out
and walk out of the parlour, flipping them off
head turned
so no-one can see
the beginning of tears in my eyes.

vii.
coke or pepsi?
you and i sit there, at a party
as they’re taking votes.
i don’t care
they both taste the same to me
you shrug when the crowd approaches you
‘i don’t like either’
and i smile at you.
now they’re on me
i roll my eyes
‘how old are you, six?’ i ask
‘get me some decent liquor
if you have any.’
the silence is broken
only by your laugh.
i smile at you,
you take my hand
‘let’s go to the bar,’ you say
we walk out,
laughing.

viii.
we don’t go to the bar,
obviously
we don’t like being tipsy
swaying
waking up in gutters
with one hell of a hangover.
we climb your rooftop instead
and stare at the night sky
getting ourselves
drunk on starlight.
when we go inside
it’s 1 AM
i text my mom, telling her
i’m at your place, i’m safe
they’re both synonyms but just in case she forgets.

ix.
‘coffee or tea?’ i ask
as we enter your kitchen.
‘it depends on my mood,’ you respond,
sitting on the kitchen couner,
dangling your legs over the edge.
i smile
and begin making us coffee
because i understand
what it’s like to have a preference
even if you love two things
equally.

x.
we thought we wouldn’t go to any more parties
but this time
they insist
so we show up.
we play a game
that is as mono-opinionated as they come
‘truth or dare’
i want to scream
but i know that this is just how things are
it’s my turn
‘truth’ i say
because who knows
what these halfwitted adolescents we have to call peers
can come up with
in the name of a dare.
‘do you like girls or boys?’ she asks
and it’s not the question that puts me off
it’s use of that word,
or.
‘neither,’ i spit. ‘both.’
and i get up
and walk out of there
hearing my footsteps distort the sound of silence.
you follow right after
and hold me in your arms under the ceilinged sky of unhinged stars
i cry into your shoulder.
‘both,’ i whisper. ‘all of the above.’
and you give me a sad smile
and walk me home.
‘my sexuality is no man’s land’ i say as you turn to leave
and you reach out and hug me
‘that only means that you’re braver than those people
who use measuring scales
and tear tokens along the dotted line,’ you say
‘you live in a world
where things are absolute,
not one or the other
just what they are.’
i smile at you
and i watch you walk away
into the shadows.

xi.
this time when you call me
you’re crying
and your voice sounds very small
almost like a sliver of differential calculus.
you say
the mythology course you want to apply for
has only two check boxes for gender
and you don’t know which one to choose.
i didn’t know
that you were like this too
an invisible borderline in-betweener
but i know how to comfort you.
i tell you that they’re hypocrites,
and i recite to you
legends and folklore of Hindu mythology
where gender was a blurred line
even for divinity
i know these myths
like the back of my hand.
when you finally say goodbye
i can hear you smiling on the other end.

xii.
‘cats or dogs?’ the lady at the adoption centre asks.
‘sorry?’ i say, confused
‘are you a cat person
or a dog person?’
she says more slowly this time
i stare at her.
‘i’m a dragon person,’ i say
and when she smiles
i decide not to hold a grudge.
‘we’re out of stock,’ she apologizes
‘but we have a boisterous parrot
named Phoenix.’
‘it’s a deal,’ i say, and my smile is genuine.
‘thank you.’

xiii.
my parents ask me about my future
i say
‘i’m figuring it out
but i know one thing.’
‘yes?’ they ask.
‘i will not be contained
by the lines
society has drawn for me.
i will live
in no man’s land.’

xiv.
‘we categorise things,’ you say
we’re sitting by the beach
there will be sand in the hems of my jeans
but i don’t care.
‘not us, but you know, humans as a whole.
to make it easier to understand,
we box things up.
vanilla or chocolate,
coke or pepsi,
girls or boys,
whatever.
they’re just divisions
over which superficial people form bonds
and unite.’
i smile.
‘what are we?’
you smile back.
‘the minority
invisible
physics calls us errors,
mathematics calls us deviations,
but our chemistry tells us
we are everything we need to be.’
‘rebels,’ i whisper
the word sounds like a promise against my lips.
‘yes,’ you say.
‘yes.’

first posted on dA, 2016.

this is basically just a fancy way for me to say that i don’t think i’m as cis as i thought i was

november waltzes in with their hair
lilac dyed and a smile on their face. they’re a real surgeon, they talk
anatomy, they whistle at the wolves and laugh when the lights go out. they draw
in gold pen, kiss pretty boys and paint flowers on leather jackets. their nails
are glittery metallic dark green, their knuckles painted lightning. november
goes to the mall & doesn’t buy anything. november buys a cigarette lighter
even though they don’t smoke. november ghosts their best friend for three weeks
because solitary confinement and anxiety dance in the headlights of their
cornerstore mind. but they know it’ll get better one day. they buy knives from
the secondhand store, get the pattern of the guppy tattooed onto their ribs.
they know the value of love.

november as a symphony & november as silence, antigoneblue

august walks in like something angry and something vivid. they’re here for the afterparty, for the graduation & the champagne that they couldn’t possibly afford that’s made of their dreams and their hopes. august sits on the table with their hands folding origami paper cranes of peace and their mouth the shape of rebirth. august talks like they know they could save lives, laughs like a fire engine, smiles like they’ve got a secret. when the sun goes down i think of them at the xray machine, pressing their hands against it because radiation passes right through them. i think of them with moths in their hair, with paint on their face and a smile that’s tinged melancholy. august, the month of the melancholic. august, the patron saint of lost hope & new beginnings. they take my hands & pull me up. “go get your girl,” they say. i smile. i nod. “okay,” i say. “okay.”

the year is two-thirds over, which means it’s just getting started | ANTIGONEBLUE 

(alt title: just another poem about august)