Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination Before a Diagnosis Can Be Determined

Antonym for me a medical

book. Replace all the punctuation—

commas, periods, semicolons—with question marks.

Diagnosis is just apotheosis with sharper

edges. New name for a myth already lived in.

For the sake of thoroughness, I have

given until my veins cratered. Tests administered for:

HIV, cirrhosis, glucose, cancer, creatine, albumin, iron, platelets.

I’ve slept for days, wired to machines. Had my piss filtered for stray proteins

just to be safe. Still, inside my body—

kingdom with poisoned wells. I want anything but an elegy

lining my bones. I just want to be a question this body can answer.

My new doctor writes one referral, then another, still

no guesses. A man in a scowl & lab coat

offers yoga, more painkillers. Suggests

PTSD could be the cause—of chronic pain, my limp, of migraines,

quickened pulse & blood-glittered coughs, of seizures

rattling me inside my skin—O,

syndrome of my perfect & unbroken

transgender arm. They checked my hormones too. Yes.

Unfathomable—a suffering I did not choose. Must be gender, this

vacancy my body makes of its own flesh. How I vanish from myself.

We search for a beginning to this story & find only a history of breakage

X-rays cannot explain. Some girls are not made, but spring from the dirt:

yearling tree already scarred from its branch’s severance.

Zygote of red clay that rain washes into a river of blood.