Mama

There was in me
A trailing reluctance
To let go
Of what nurtured you—

Even though
It now fed
Neither you
Nor me.

But—

When you tucked your head
Against my chest
To cling again,
I don't think
You even
Noticed
It was gone.

Inspired by talking with a newly-hatched Jewish trans woman.

Tikkun

Each of these pains
Is the jagged edge
Of a cracked
Vessel

You are not separate
From a wounded
Creation
The light you find
In your own curves
Is also divine

To become holy
Is
To become whole.

Miria

A mirror
Is a harrowing thing
And I hid from them
For years,
Flinching back
From the memories of monsters
Peering around the jamb
Of duplicated doors,
Hungry for thought.

I am
No longer
An extracted reflection
But changed:

At last

I saw me
Instead
Of you

And I am not afraid.

( I actually wanna explain the literary reference here. Not the Feri mythology bit, that can just sit. )

Fine

Change is a
Crucible
And I am on fire;

The world burns
So hot
Nothing false in me
Can escape the flame

(and i hope
to survive it
i pray)

If we are
Any of us
To be okay
Ever again

We must rise in truth
Within the funeral pyre
Of our failures.

This is—

Crack

A smooth arc
Knows naught
Of becoming;
It must break itself
Into
A whole bird

The song shivers
Like an egg,
Warbling shards
Of something
New

Late

Before you say
You are too old to change,
Listen:
Some of these new hairs
Are already
Silver
It is never too late
To climb out
Of your grave.

Latum

That which cannot be carried
Weights
Waits
Wears down the flesh of will
For a season,
Another season,
A knife-edge infinity of endurance.

(It cannot be "tuli"
The problem is in the progressive.)

Bearing

Their eyes ask why
Come out of the cave
If I could
Hibernate
Until there is light

But—

They never felt
The closet's steel jaws
Tasting blood,
And
Silence
Which is—

Transitions

To live life like a pheasant
Scratching the earth in peace:
Until
The sound of the dogs promises
That the hunters are coming
And the targets
Shall
Fly
Fly
Fly

... which I'd mostly dropped out of my life a while ago, but.

Posted this to Making Light, in one of the current discussions of the Sad Puppies slate and the Hugos:

A reader, fit for nominating, I
Cannot in earnest decency assert
Myself to be; that which I seem to buy
Is rarely current, slowly read. I flirt
With reading fiction once again and find
That fitting it is harder than it was,
That research reading envelops my mind
When I have time to read. (Despite its flaws
The internet’s diversions fit my space.)
The book I’m reading is from twenty-ten.*
(When the children leave to me a place
Where I can read it.) So, I find that when
My vote is claimed as good, I therefore go
“It’s nice of you to say so, but, just, no.”

* I Shall Wear Midnight. Came off my fiction-to-read-soon shelf for the obvious reasons after living there for several years.

---

I have more thoughts but I am not sure about actually articulating them. Aside from being darkly amused by the bit in the first thread on the topic having as one of its topics "a sure sign of compatibility with fandom is wibbling about whether or not one really belongs there".

I think, though, in the lack of a directly fandom-related icon, I will use the one based on papersky's "Which Village Are You" (possibly Kentish on the village, it was something more specific and I'm forgetting the details) game of years ago, which at least feels to me like it possesses the correct nature.