when a birth certificate hijacks a body and tells it to forever hold its peace
we must ask:
what would it mean to say
that i was assigned brown at birth?
(& then came ‘man’ as the punctuation
mark after)
what would it mean to say that
after 9/11
my ?
became !
what would it mean to say that
the war on terror made me trans?
would you believe me if i told you
that i woke up afraid of myself?
would you believe me if i told you that
i have spent the past decade
flying away from man because
he brown
he !
would you accept me if i told you
that my identity is the inhale
yanked exhale
the trauma
yanked body
the violence
yanked gender ?
would you accept me if I told you
my gender came from violence?
because sometimes i wonder
if there would be gender if there
were no violence.
sometimes i
wonder if there would be body if
there were no trauma.
sometimes i
wonder if there would be brown
if there were no plane.
last weekend i smiled
when the security guard
patted me down
i wonder
if he was searching for my
gender
i wanted to shout “wait – you are right —
i am concealing a weapon down there”
how we no longer attempt
to translate violence into
language
how we have found ways
to make their !
? itself
how good it feels
to have them fumbling
in the darkness
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