My Melissa,

whose trans body is a house without a hacksaw, a nap inside

a needle, a glass vase ¾ full of smooth stones;

whose trans aorta is a mesquite tree careening through power lines, a Cooper’s Hawk

lit by lightning; whose trans lungs are two jars full

of  bumblebees singing on the uncovered back porch. Even our name is a match

tossed into the fire it started, an edgeless invocation. Melissa, a wind

made by swinging; grass cutting through concrete; bubble-wrap being danced on,

albeit slowly, as if that alone could quiet the tiny explosions down the hall. Whose

trans articular cartilage is string light threaded through the rafters; whose trans

tunica media is a sliver of decorated cardboard doubling as a protest

sign inside the window, which only serves to emphasize the window’s 
inefficacy

against the sun; whose trans epiglottis is an apron

on a hook; whose trans trapezius are cups in the sink filled

with inconsistently directed knives and spoons; whose trans metatarsals are

green beans boiling on the stove; whose trans subclavian artery is organ

pipe cactus under cloud cover; whose trans left ventricle is a black-capped goldfinch hanging

upside down to eat; whose trans lesser trochanter is a hen’s claw growing around a rope;

whose trans great saphenous veins are technologies of prediction—tarot, storm-

tracker, political polls; whose trans dead space is the undeniable pollution

of light; whose trans thyroid cartilage is commissioned

graffiti; whose trans facial hair is the gentrifier yelling

gentrification; whose trans erythrocytes are dapples of daylight

drug across a concrete block wall; whose trans stroke volume is a live-

streamed filibuster; whose trans plasma is the intimacy

of strangers immediate in an emergency; whose trans plasma proteins are women

filling a courtroom—one by one approaching the judge—performing

all the mental and physical labor of obtaining a divorce; whose trans 
integumentary system

is the myth of meritocracy; whose trans rectum is a local philanthropic institution;

whose trans bile is the taste of a slap echoing in your mother’s open palm;

whose trans femoral vein is a cat’s claw’s crafted search for the sun;

whose trans pharynx is an empty building brimming with trampolines; whose trans ovaries

are interrobangs used unironically; whose trans ureter is

a stop sign stuffed with bullet holes near a ditch filled with sunflowers near a wasp’s

nest near a farm. Sometimes I’m afraid I am afraid

of me, my trans sympathetic nervous

system, my trans fatigue

cracks, my trans 1st Corinthians 3:16 training

the god right out of my trans temple,

all trans dove, no savior; a trans baptism, holy

to be a fire (trans) trembling in the tear of the trans (daughter, trans) tongue. How I love you

now, my trans vagina, my trans manubrium, my trans Melissa, in every iteration TC

Melissa Dawn Tolbert who was even once

a Harrison, a wife to a husband; it is possible she loved

me then too. Hiding can she hear me

say thank you. To my trans uterus, my trans pectoralis major, my trans penis: the highest point

on earth is in the ocean. Sea stars, our body’s becoming. A trans prayer. An infinite, inexhaustible

rhizome of the heart. You,

whose tragus is trans, whose kidneys, whose medulla oblongata, whose

adrenal glands, whose cochlea, whose pleural space; whose trans sacrum is simultaneous,

the site of the storm and the keel of a storm-scored boat.

Whose trans arrector pili muscle is the fact that no matter when this 
sentence is read, it will be true

that someone somewhere is trying to survive a sexual assault; whose trans inferior

vena cava is a clock that has not yet been hung on the wall.

I love you time, how trans you are.

Your trans boredom, ribbon-sharp and meadow-bold. You, whose bark is

trans; whose recovery, whose lumen, whose partial pressure

(trans), in order to live, must continue to respond to changes in the lungs.