MAN

if you want me, you got me

i am flinching forever, it seems
always braced for a knock to the face
of my heart, my soul, my psyche
shuttered and shuddering

how much therapy can unwind
a lifetime of repression,
leagues deep?

how does one know
when to trust the truth of something
if nothing is ever fixed?

what does it mean to be static
when what we see of it, electricity
-wise, is that it makes sparks
is this not, then, kinetic?

my psyche tells me
i am now a man,
and i feel into it

i've tucked away most
of my beloved nightgowns,
though am wearing one right now,
thinking of it as some sort of
genderqueer christening gown
once belonging to the grandmother
of a friend, all long white cotton
ruffled hem, and teeming frills
of lace

when i was in high school
my screen name was lacysusie2,
i wanted to be associated
w/ something beautiful

this was following southrnwildflowr
(e-s removed to fit length requirements)
created w/ the inspiration of impressing
a boy i had a crush on who was very
obsessed with the allman brothers

i've been thinking about my twin brother,
and if now i am, or will be, a brother
after acutely being defined sister

in this case i don't really want to be
(a brother) in that i feel attached
to the dichotomy and composition 
we had

i wonder about daughter, too,
and how relationships change
when new language emerges--
the specificity in dynamic between
a mother and a daughter,
a father and a daughter
continuums i have lived

to have lived in so many dimensions
i see myself as a young girl,
living in terror, known for sensitivity,
singing to the stars

i wonder if she/he/they
had any sense of being other
than the girl they were told
they were

yesterday i have a ketamine treatment
session, i go into with questions:
seeking clarity around gender identity
desiring to connect with my childhood
self, and also the baby i've spoken to,
known closely, dearly wanted to have

multitudinous hormones and processes
at odds and intersecting. i wonder 
if the piece i dreamed of creating 
years ago, MOTHER MEN, about
the male relationship to pregnancy
and fertility was about me all along

i mean it wasn't, i had cis-men in mind,
i was making a piece called WARM WOMEN,
it was all about queering, the intentions of each

little by little, i came to this point
reclined in a seat in a clinic w/ an iv
humidifier oozing bioluminescent pink light
amidst a swirl of steam, i sink into a journey
i deem vital to get to the next place
some stone-step out of hellish passage

as the medicine begins to unfurl inside me
we get to the multiplicitousness,
how intense it means to be so much,
and then the epicenter of my being, 
which is gay 

i see pink and blue, myself as a femme,
then a mer in masc-form on top,
and i ask, request clarity, on how i need
to be embodied in this lifetime

we swirl between forms, i see vastness
and seas, i think of jesus christ holding
it all, and then the word MAN appears,
w/ an image of my face, all dolled up
from an instagram post moons ago

and just after, before the iv drains
its final drops, "i am a gay man,"
some sense of parisian intrigue
boy pervert in a bar, me, all ugly
(as i've been guided to believe)
though smiling.

i'd been hoping for something
else in closing, a reaffirmation
of my fluidity and expansiveness,
that i could be all things, not have
to change so much

we don't know, of course,
if this is the be all, end all,
though it's message was clear
and striking. 

in gown i type, regarding
my painted toes, tits taped
and wondering where to go next
and if i shell out 30k i don't have
to freeze my eggs before 
potentially taking t

never did i believe i'd make it
to this point in the dance.
the princess i so long to be,
the princess i have been
how the akashic guides
referred to me as "the princess
who saved herself" last year,
and how much i related

after the gay man comment,
i begged, or proclaimed,
"and princess!" as if to say,
please let me have this too
please let me be all things
and saw myself in my favorite 
green gown, velvet sweetheart top
with full skirt, a medieval delight,
i have gone to many balls,
in my consciousness, in this

i wonder, can i be this gay man,
and still look like that?

and the word WOMEN floats by
belovedly, a category i painfully
don't want to be removed from
and also recognize does not fit
as much as i want(ed) it to,
pushed to expand, stay within
it's domain, while still feeling
everything i did

at night i have a tarot reading 
with marta and she draws
the king of cups, says,
this is the man you are!
a king that leads with artfulness
emotionally sensitive, generous
at first i cackle and resonate 
w/ delight, and then i scurry
to attempt to include 
the princess too

can we all be?

shed the queen from my 
instagram handle two months ago
when i announced my name change,
given name hanging on its tail

wondering if it'd be helpful to now
include king, while also wanting
to resist imperialism, archetype
not belief in monarchy, obviously

where i have been
holding back, can i
feel into something new?
can the feeling help ease
the terror?

and how else 
can a king/queen look?