Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Untitled. Fused silk. Photograph by Kevin Ryan.
Courtesy of the Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Foundation.
Everyday I build the little boat,
my body boat, hold for the unique one,
the formless soul, the blue fire
that coaxes my being into being.
— Taylor Johnson, “TRANS IS AGAINST NOSTALGIA”
Friend,
I’m doing it. I’m building the boat.
Took a while, but I build. With my therapist,
I start.
I turn my eye inside catalogue the damage
Summer.soft soil.summer.soft flesh.summer.soft fists.
diligent taxonomist.
car.leave.car.you sure?.car. how do you know?.car.demons inside-.car
Which is a new species of laceration?
LEARN.ignant.toosweet.toosoft.toomuch. boy.
How does one classify trauma if they all return
to your body? to your voice? to your refusal to?
Friend, I’ll confess to you: initially, I was obsessed
with finding an inciting incident a spark of moment to burn
all the cities down
and call that my healing.
A reason to arrive finally.
But there are too many cities.
And I keep remembering.
Friend, does the remembering get easier?
Nonetheless we move. Cause fuck else can we do?
I gather two of each I need:
two hands, two lungs
two friends for emotional support, two friends to smoke me out
cleave/clamber, spit/swallow
I give myself over to phenomenology
instead of possession.
I say “I am a person experiencing hurt.”
I say “It is not my hurt”
One day my chest will know the difference.
Futurity is a language my tongue still
fumbles. For now, I settle
on learning the lexicon of Dawning.
Because friend, everyday I build, I get it.
I get seeing devastation behind you and having no verbage for it but home.
I get the temptation to look back, borrow the language of yesterday.
I get how easy it is to spill into salt.
Still I move.
I leave/I arrive
Because friend,
One thing I do believe:
. the sunlight fractured by
prism shattering into rainbow
(a promise) stealing into my bedroom each morning
is a form of transubstantiation I can have faith in.
. Faith in perpetual arrival.
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This is part of the cluster Restless Flying. Read the other posts here.
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Kalvin Marquis