Trans Loneliness
Martha P. Johnson
Why doubt I’d grow breasts a ‘Natural’ way?
Am I not ‘Real’ Flesh? Am I not enworthied sway
of that Biology? Not ‘Cis,’ you think me ‘alien’?
Loose? Do I so estrange? Wouldn’t I be, monstrous, the ‘Gorgon’
Lady with my two ‘new,’ added, latest ‘Eyes’ budding from the Chest
Plate O it hurt—the nips (eyes turned her into a ‘monster’ ) that gaze best
At a gracious, ‘specious’ World sends Fists. But I took my Estrogen
Chill, my Antiandrogen, over some several years, then ‘broke’
my ‘Chill’ to stern the Heart—
That it? Then I ‘urged’ Progesterone into the Regimen,
Pills that nearly broke my heart, except I ‘bloom’d’—beware I am
A Beauty, with Spices added. I ‘bleed.’ Can I pray
Such radical, natural ‘unsurgery’ upon my Fungible self is enuf
Trans? enuf Woman? (Black as I am?) And Soy.
God’s-child. Tho some surgery be our choice, Martha, our right to ‘appeal’
& so revise what Lonely, happy ‘Sovereignty’ of the Body we claim,
I can’t afford it. So I learned to ‘express’ my Body piecemeal,
No ‘cancer.’ Didn’t I rise again in the am to cry ‘pearls’? Please, Friend, girl, answer.
Notes:
As Carl Jung reminds us, “Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.” This sonnet, written to a pioneer, if not all Black trans women, incorporates the pharmaceutical names some of our hormonal regimens use. Where the single quotation marks appear I mean to put pressure on and reveal some ways figurative language is excused, where it’s refused too often with regard to “woman.”
Source: Poetry (July/August 2024)