Let’s
talk about these
bootstraps
double-helixed
through the eyelets
of
the shoes that you lace up
when
you go running down
these
streets where you feel safe
when
you go running down
the
folks who say they aren’t safe
in
these streets
when
you go running down
the
ones whose dna laced different patterns
through
the eyelets of the chromosomes
you
use as shorthand,
Big Bang Theory boxset
scientist,
who
thinks toilets marked by crosses
like
a plague door are a joke
to
like and share
like
the experiences
shared
the
lips that suckle
at
your breast,
the
monthly
bleeding
nature
girl.
Let’s
talk about this nature:
let’s
talk about the boys who bleed
each
month and hate the stuff,
let’s
talk about top surgery,
let’s
talk about the tits that I am growing
which
will never feed a child
and
grant me
Mumsnet
kinship,
let’s
talk about the womb I’ll never shed,
the
uterus that Lili Elbe died
in
transplantation of,
let’s
talk about the
‘unexpected’
cock
which
-
even clothed! –
makes
me a monster,
let’s
talk monstrances
and
transubstantiation
because
that’s the kind of
science
that
you’re talking
here:
how many murdered trans women of colour
can dance in the space you routinely
leave out
between adjective
and
verb?
And if you say ‘cis is a slur!’
into
the weeds on the waste ground
in
back of the Dairy Queen
where
Zoraida Reyes’ body was discovered
does
that still make a sound
like
your dog whistle words
on
how the revolution came to you
as
a woman on the cover of a magazine
who
wasn’t butch
and
white
and
happy to play MichFest
until
challenged?
Let’s
parse the
theodicy
of
claiming
‘gender
hurts’
and
‘morally mandating’
that
the care which cures the pain
should
not be given;
let’s
rule on who’s allowed to use
which
lavatory in Heaven...
we’ve
been saying since ‘11
that
this maze has intersections
snaking
like the laces
on
our shoes you tied together
while
we slept
for
shits and giggles,
while
you claim it’s not an issue
if
we wriggle free and hurl those shoes
above
the wires
while
saying that we’re done...
but
hey, success is not for everyone.
Let’s
talk about the hard work you’ve gone
through,
and all the things you had to do,
and
reassure us that we’re all just like you,
as
we ignore the faces
that
we don’t see in this room.
Come:
talk to us about the laces
in
your big man’s
cis
man’s
straight
man’s
white
man’s
safe
man’s
Great
Man’s
shoes.
