Golden Shovel for Medical Transition

I once incinerated, abject flames of desire, but now I am all cool water. Now I am cerulean. I’ve had my share of death’s whisper. I’ve tried to ignore it. When I told my lover the name I grew myself, I imagined losing myself in the wounds in Christ’s side. Now I place phone calls and whisper truth. Now I request letters that prove what I already know. They don’t believe you about yourself. They don’t want you to survive. They prefer for you to exist as hagiography rather than as confounder. To die rather than to insist. When I walked in the gender clinic I had to learn to insist. Here, The words must linger on your tongue, come from the deepest, most uninhibited, most unhinged part of your viscera, and only then, maybe, you get your deserts. Don’t make me seek revenge for my wasted years. Don’t tell me I should wait longer. Whatever you do, don’t deny that I will evaporate without what I want. Use a knife, gouge me out, violence’s opposite, to perplex anyone who thinks it’s better to die in this body than to construct my own. In every universe, I insist, I insist, I am here.