80 lines
4.1 KiB
HTML
80 lines
4.1 KiB
HTML
---
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date: 2019-11-01
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weight: 8
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fit: true
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---
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<pre class="verse">What can I say of healing? Of life after change?
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I got used to it, bit by bit. I slowly learned my range,
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the extent of my new body. Proprioception caught up immediately,
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and there were no phantom sensations, and the immediacy
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was startling at first, but I got used to it, to my new form.
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Over the next weeks and months, I slowly learned my new norm.
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I learned by regaining feeling. I learned with every muscular flex.
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I learned by dilating. I learned by masturbating. I learned by sex.
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While I refused to let my happiness hinge on such a thing,
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a part of me hoped it'd make me more comfortable get in the swing
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of sex, and while it helped, I still was still largely okay without.
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My body was still my own. Whole and entire. My life played out,
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and I became more myself.
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<blockquote>This isn't going how you pictured it, this bit of writing.
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You were going to talk more about healing, about fighting
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for permission to change, about your $76,000 bill.
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And here you talk of trees and growth. Did you not get your fill?
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Do you still need this outlet?</blockquote>
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Apparently.
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      Apparently I still need to revel in the newness.
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Apparently, what I need out of this project isn't the trueness
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of the concrete. We should really have expected nothing less.
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This is a project to dig for truth, a project to confess.
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It is not a project for describing stitches stabbing me in the clit.
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It is not for telling about each successive dilator testing the fit
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of my new depths. Could I have gone into that? Yes. Perhaps.
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Perhaps I still will. Later. For now, I still need to run laps,
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to circle around some dark core and discern its edges.
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Perhaps if I know that shape, if I peek over enough hedges,
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I'll somehow know myself better. I don't know. It feels unlikely.
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Maybe there is no knowing the self. Still, I have to try, rightly
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or not.
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<blockquote>Fair enough. Still, at some point, discuss the concrete.
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So many have asked you to, and perhaps you'd feel complete.
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Perhaps that, too, would be of use to you. Not everything demands
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such thorough introspection. Not everything fits in the wetlands
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of your subconscious</blockquote>
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Of course not. I know this. <em>You</em> know I know this.
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I'm not deflecting, just focusing on this part of the abyss.
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The concrete aspects are for writing with clarity,
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not with verse. They're for writing with the sincerity
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borne of experience, so that perhaps others can benefit.
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Of this, only I need benefit. There is an etiquette
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to writing for others. Here, there is only an ally.
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This is for me and you. Your role is to hear my lie,
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to call it out, to force me to correct myself, my words.
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My role is to keep on writing, be it about surgery or birds,
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and to learn from our discussions. To learn? To suffer?
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Perhaps more the latter. To hurt, and grow tougher
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by hurting.
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<blockquote>You have been called on that, yes, writing to suffer.
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And it's not wrong. You sit at your laptop and fill the buffer
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with sentences and lines and paragraphs of memories and pain.
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Do you really grow tougher? Is it masochisim, or do you gain
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real insight from this?</blockquote>
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I think I do. It's therapeutic to try and understand myself better.
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is it not? With every paragraph and line and word and letter,
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I think I reduce the borders of that abyss. Or if not reduce,
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I spraypaint a red line five feet from them, so that I can deduce
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my roughest edges. I'm often say that it's easy to discern boundaries
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by crossing them. I've crossed them here, with you. Foundries
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of thought and emotion are within me, ceaselessly toiling.
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I want to tour them all. I want to see them boiling.
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I feel them. I house them. I smell them and taste them.
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I just also want to understand them. There's no chaste hem
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to the subconscious, so I have to map it, map these crude sources.
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Then I can experience thisness --- I hope --- when buffeted by forces
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internal.
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<blockquote>If you say so, I suppose. Do you think it'll work, though?
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Aren't such works unknowable by definition? They grow,
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they wane. You can sense them by their effects and emissions,
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but isn't seeing them, truly seeing, knowing their positions,
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reserved for dreams?</blockquote></pre>
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