Having a Great Time Being Transgender in America Lately

It is day infinity
of everyone wanting me dead. People are having fun
bringing lemon squares and automatic artillery to the anti-trans community meetings.
Divorced legislators harangue
about pedophile cults and surgeried infants and what ever happened to forever ago.
I am more beautiful than you and I would like to be loved.
I am getting concerned
about the monomaniacs who make their entire lives about deadnaming and transvestigations:
obviously it’s working but aren’t you exhausted, don’t you remember
when someone loved you without knowing what you were?
I am eating shortbread on a patio table overlooking the enormous green ocean.
Somewhere an octopus is being eaten by an octopus and not panicking.
Black dress to the floor, red acrylic nails, silver teardrop earrings, waterproof mascara.
I am excited to do this for the rest of my life and be terrified.
I hear a noise behind me and I don’t turn around.

Source: Poetry (June 2024)