SG Huerta

When your grieving anthem
becomes your transitioning anthem

“I’ll feel better. I’ll feel better. I’ll feel better. I’ll feel better.”
– The Front Bottoms, “Today Is Not Real”

If it wasn’t for the changes,

I would probably die

before anyone saw me

how I’m supposed to be.

I do not hate the woman

I was; I simply traded

PINK Soft & Dreamy for Old Spice

Wolfthorn, misogyny for transphobia.

Maybe I should dress up

my language, my wounds. I want to pass

as trans, wear my transess

on a harness that digs

into my expanding waistline, wear it in my

voice that’s sure to break

soon. Every song escaping

my cracked phone’s speaker

is a trans song, actually. Every

poem I penned pre-pandemic

features Alive Father and his

Cis Daughter. I would probably

die.

Yesterday I Shaved My Thigh for the First Time in 3.5 Years in Preparation for a Tattoo and Now I Have A Lot of Feelings About it

95% of guys would kill
to have my jawline
according to my boyfriend.
We are both guys
only some of the time
but all of the time I am
fighting with myself,
my hips, my [nonexistent],
my existence. I’m obsessed
with compartmentalizing
myself– self, let me live!
I categorize behaviors
into stacks of neatly labeled
shoeboxes: transness, dykery,
bipolarisms, PTSD, Chicanismo.
Some of the time I am
a guy but sliding the pink
disposable razor across
my thigh felt like a crime,
raspberry shaving cream
climbing my nostrils. Left
with so much black hair
in my sink, I tossed the razor.

The First Time I Googled Packing I Got Images of Suitcases Because I Thought Siri Would Call Me a Slur for Typing “Trans”

I do not know where I end
and dysphoria begins if even

the two can – should – be
separated, if even what I have

qualifies, but here’s what I know:

an absence
where there should be

something, but I cannot

bear to spell it out for you,
not with words,

so

let me fill you with
my emptiness with

the nothing between my legs.
Pretend it is something.

Originally published in Variant Lit Issue 8