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.