I’ll have no need to fear
giving up my name to that
persxn @ the gates
of our shared holding pen, on guard
duty for good behavior,
crotch exposed as if to compensate.
Once upon a passport marked
me feasible
even foreseeable.
Now I’m simply spoken of
in puréed grammar
only in the passive voice.
Child has been born by woman ––
sun has by rain been shrouded. Mist
aches were made, and such.
//
When trans goes out of style
I will begin to think my body
as a proper life –– that is, an egg-
timer, flipped and finite. The last
to know our gender-
jargon will make up a pronoun
no one can pronoun
ce, and it will fade unspoken.
We’ll all id as evidence
exclusively. Then I’ll fear
far more than all the missing
deadlined books about myself
all those special issues
which declined me
tolerantly. In fact
there will be no books at all.
Period. No one will read
anything they shouldn’t read,
and even all the street-signs
stripped bare to shape.
Each person knows already
just where s/he is going.