Scars/Before and After, Eyes Only/Horse To Water

I don’t really understand the whole

“Show off your scars”

Thing. I don’t understand it.

I do not feel

More like a man, because I’ve been carved into one–

I feel more like a man

Because the world treats me as one.

Did surgery help?

Yes, tremendously. Pictures of me

Before and after, eyes only

Are undisputable proof

Of my mental health improving since surgery.

Nothing about the surgery improved my mental health–

How I was treated

After surgery

Is what improved my mental health.

This is a huge distinction…!

My scars out me, my experience outs me

My perspective outs me, which is why

I don’t try to hide whatsoever and I don’t care

If anyone misgenders me because

I am who I am, and I am proud to be myself

I am not proud of what I had to go through I am simply

Proud to be alive, to survive, to have the opportunity to thrive.

To me, to reduce my experience

To hormones and surgery

As some sort of powerful and reconstructive force–

Is the most incredulously reductive thing I’ve ever heard of!

The powerful and reconstructive force

That has changed my life

Is my anger, turned to love

Turned to action, turned to passion.

To brag and boast and show off scars to me–

I dunno man, it’s just fucking weird.

It’s a means to an end, it isn’t

The goal, it isn’t the punctuation, it’s simply

One of the lines in a series of poems

Too long and too specific to understand, but

When you zoom out, you see the journey

Start to finish. I wonder what it is

That I can do

To try and teach people how being trans is

More than a look, more than a feeling, more than a

Before and after picture more than

Names and pronouns more than

Identity, it’s about

The soul and it’s journey.

How can you lead a horse to water

And make them drink it…?

Asking for a friend, of course–

I’ll keep brainstorming.