October, Ideally
a poem about my cock and the pain that comes from being months from bottom surgery with FFS up in the air
This poem is free to read. Paid subscriptions are genuinely how I cover groceries and keep this going full time, so if the work means something to you, I’d really appreciate it.
Mirror first. Face first.
Soft jaw. Wet eyes. Mouth trembling
before the crying starts.
Skin softer than it used to be.
Cheeks fuller. A girl looking back
through bad bathroom light
like she fought her way out of a burning house
and still has smoke in her hair.
There she is.
Then my eyes drop and the room caves in.
My cock hangs there.
Soft. Quiet. Wrong.
Not powerful. Not useful.
Not even cruel in the old way anymore.
A dead little interruption
between my face and the rest of my life.
I do not want to be hard.
I do not want to top.
I want genitals that work.
I don’t think I’m asking for much.
I want to touch myself and feel a body answer.
I want sensation without the room going cold.
I want pleasure without translation.
I want something alive there
instead of this limp silence
that makes me feel abandoned
by a part of myself I never even wanted.
The hormones gave me so much.
My face changed. My skin changed. My smell changed.
Crying got easier, which is rude, honestly,
but also true.
The girl came closer
one pill, one level, one blood draw at a time.
Then my body started leaving before it arrived.
Third sexed in the build up to bottom surgery.
Too changed to pretend.
Too unfinished to rest.
Too close to October to go numb.
Too far from October to survive this cleanly.
Ideally.
October, ideally.
As if the calendar has ever saved a girl from the mirror.
As if dysphoria knows how to wait its turn.
Tonight it doesn’t.
Tonight my face looks like mine
and my genitals feel like a locked room.
Tonight my cheeks are wet
and my hand covers myself before thought gets there.
Tonight shame has muscle memory.
Tonight the mirror keeps collecting evidence
and my body stands there looking guilty for existing.
The mirror is not the only one collecting.
My friends collect.
My fiancée collects.
I imagine them
running the little inventory
the second I leave the room.
The jaw.
The brow.
The cheek that did not come down all the way.
They say I am beautiful.
I hear them say it.
I hear the silence after.
Whether they think I am clocky
and do not say it.
Whether kind is what people do
for a girl who almost made it.
Whether the room adjusts around me
the way a room adjusts
around someone who came close.
Kindness is just the mirror
being polite.
I cannot ask her.
She says no, I do not believe her.
She says yes,
I carry the yes
into every fucking photograph
for the rest of my life.
My fiancée would love me here.
She would.
She would kiss my face. She would pull me into bed.
She would call me baby
like the word still has a place to land.
She would touch my thigh
and never make a trial out of what hurts.
She does not need me hard.
She does not need me to top.
She does not need proof
from the part of me already halfway gone.
And yet I feel very little relief from it
that comes out when I look down
and realize I wanted choice, not this.
I wanted refusal while refusal still meant something.
I wanted to say no to a living thing.
Now it has gone quiet before the knife.
Now it hangs there like grief with skin.
Now the body I hated
has found a new way to hurt me.
Useless does not mean harmless.
Gone quiet does not mean gone.
Every part of me arrives at a different time.
My face gets there first.
My voice follows on better days.
My body softens in strange, merciful patches.
My chest rises like a small apology from the universe.
Then below my stomach
the old sentence remains, crossed out, still readable.
I cry harder because my face is beautiful in the mirror.
That sounds vain until the crying bends me over.
It is not vanity. It is grief with proof.
The girl is there.
The girl is visible.
The girl survived.
The girl has eyes and cheeks and lips
and a body still arguing with the evidence.
I look at my face and feel hope.
I look down and feel punished.
No clean line between gratitude and disgust.
No neat little transition poem
where the body becomes metaphor
and everyone claps politely
because pain got arranged into literature.
No.
Tonight my underwear sits around my knees
and my stomach hurts from crying.
Tonight the future feels late.
October, ideally.
Please hold.
Please come.
Please let the surgeon’s hands be steady.
Please let the nerves live.
Please let healing be boring.
Please let me wake up
inside a body that does not make me apologize
before being touched.
Please let my fiancée love me
without me secretly standing nearby
like a cruel little witness to my own flesh.
Please let pleasure come back without this dead pause.
Please let the mirror stop cutting me in half.
Face first.
Tears.
Mouth shaking.
Girl visible.
Eyes drop.
Body splits.
The crying starts again.
Please fix me I was born wrong
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