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writing/poetry/gender.md

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+%title Gender
+
+!{In *Eigengrau*}
+
+'''
+Her hair is tied with a ribbon
+    Saying "This is not for you."
+She wears a pendant of stamped brass
+    Saying "Non sum qualis eram."
+"I have been a hero since birth,"
+    She tells herself,
+        As though that will somehow
+            Explain her scars.
+
+She pierced her own ears,
+    But did a shit job of it.
+Her tattoos tease around
+    the edges of her identity.
+Her bones are ley-lines,
+    She tells herself,
+        Strung with symbols
+            Heady with meaning.
+
+She has a certain "fuck you" inflected
+    "Je ne sais quoi" about her.
+Her clothes bespeak
+    carefully constructed laziness.
+"I've got my own style,"
+    She tells herself,
+        While doing all she can
+            To not be seen.
+
+She studied order through science
+    and found it chaotic.
+She studied chaos through music
+    and found it inviable.
+"I'll work with words."
+    She tells herself
+        She'll write a book,
+            Or publish stories.
+
+She wanted to be a bus driver
+    when she grew up.
+Then a linguist, then a biologist,
+    Then a composer, a conductor.
+She never wanted to be
+    What she became;
+        The irony of which
+            Is not lost on her.
+'''
+
+-----
+
+## Post-op images
+!{In *Eigengrau*}!{In *ally*}
+
+'''
+Saturday is for mechanics.
+Sunday is for terror.
+Monday is for acceptance.
+Tuesday is for purging.
+Wednesday is for anxiety.
+Thursday is for sleep.
+
+-----
+
+When I am asleep
+The world changes around me.
+In spring, I am changed.
+
+-----
+
+I'm no good at images, only words,
+and yet for days after surgery,
+as anesthesia and countless
+    milligrams, milliliters, millions of
+drugs leave my system,
+I'm lousy with visions,
+each lousy with meaning.
+
+I lay in bed, unable to move,
+struggling to keep my eyes open;
+I know that if I close them,
+    I'll be lost, I'll be lost, I'll be
+mired in waking dreams,
+coherent visions with all the logic
+of that paler side of consciousness.
+
+Perhaps the veil here
+is still too thin and vague,
+the pool too clear, the monsters too scary
+    too lean, too mean, too hungry, or
+perhaps I was too close to death
+to come away totally unscathed,
+too close to completely survive.
+
+    It's as though, laying here,
+    stinking of hospital,
+    I'm seeing emotions play out,
+        Scene after scene, scene after scene,
+    anxiety shown in heaps of discarded entrails,
+    hope in the ceaseless ratcheting of gears,
+    determination in the marching of feet.
+
+If I were an artist, perhaps
+I could hope to touch these images,
+but as it is, every word falls short,
+    too vague, too inexact, too tight to
+hope to explain something so vast
+by the very act of attempting to reproduce;
+I can only hint from the margins.
+
+That poetry can accomplish what prose cannot
+in its economy of motion
+is attractive to me, here in recovery -
+    so tired, so tired, so tired - so
+maybe I can hope to express the dire import
+of these visions dancing behind closed lids,
+or at least remind myself on rereading.
+
+Even now, a week out,
+I'm starting to lose touch with the visions,
+I can almost touch them if I squint,
+    lie real still, don't move now, but
+even then, a shadow of the substance...
+I'm starting to consign to memory
+that which was probably memory to begin with.
+
+-----
+
+It is two hundred miles between what I expect and what I want.
+Two hundred long strides that seem impassible from one direction,
+    and from the other a day's short drive.
+
+It is nine and a half hours between question and answer.
+A half hour of jazz, nine hours of sleep, a scant second of perspective,
+    and I can only traverse in one direction
+
+It is eleven inches between who I was and who I am.
+Ten of those inches are pain, the eleventh is numb,
+    There's pleasure to be had in there, I'm promised.
+
+It is twelve years between what I want and what I get:
+Ten years of remembering who I will become, two years running,
+    Eight days dreaming.
+
+-----
+
+What have you changed?
+    *My mind*
+What changed you?
+    *Nothing*
+What became of it?
+    *I am not who I was*
+
+What have you changed?
+    *My name*
+What changed you?
+    *The word*
+What became of it?
+    *I am called who I am*
+
+What have you changed?
+    *My looks*
+What changed you?
+    *The light*
+What became of it?
+    *I am seen as I am*
+
+What have you changed?
+    *My chemistry*
+What changed you?
+    *The substance*
+What became of it?
+    *My form is my own*
+
+What have you changed?
+    *My body*
+What changed you?
+    *The knife*
+What became of it?
+    *I am shaped how I am*
+
+What have you changed?
+    *Nothing*
+What changed you?
+    *I was accepted*
+What became of it?
+    *I accepted myself*
+
+What have you changed?
+    *Everything*
+What changed you?
+    *Everything*
+What became of it?
+    *I became who I am*
+'''