kiss the sound i make with my feet.
i am far
from everything
but i try.
i can’t read what people say about trans women anymore
or i stop feeling for months.
such is life.
soon i will turn 28.
i am approaching the sky.
every birthday after 30 will feel like a statistical anomaly
because it will be.
it’s okay to feel what is true
in your hands
and in your teeth.
it doesn’t have to heal you or set you free.
it just has to remind you that you exist.
i hardly exist and it’s fine.
i’ve climbed out of too many windows to care
but i care. i do.
i care so much i can’t get out of bed some days.
crying helps, but not enough.
why should i have to cry?
you cry. you show me something. tell me how much it hurts
to exist.
bookend my body with all your rain
until i grow into something better.
i don’t have the luxury of pretending i’m just like any other woman
when i died nothing changed and everything was normal
the sun set at 4:47 p.m. on the dot
i was caught up in a green flash of light called beautiful
we are all called beautiful when we become bodies
“we must not be loved”
“we must not be loved”
“we must not be loved,” i whisper
to a picture i took of myself in the mirror
i’m just like any other woman
my name is god’s empty dream
my name is joke on primetime television
i love to laugh but the sound has become poison to my blood
it hesitates to flow and then explodes with fury
i am a sloshing bucket full of memories
i drown inside myself
trans woman
asterisked human
pull of flesh speaking gravity’s only language
hear both sides of the story.
i need to see birds pecking out your ears.
we must consider everything.
you will bleed to call me male.
i will squirm and piss myself
off.
here, a bandage. wrap it around
my body. i am shivering
in the cold of you, you real woman forest.
i am thousand year old fungus
mourning all the light
that has passed over me.
here, both sides of the story.
something on the internet about echo chambers.
something on the internet about dead trans women.
here, both sides of the story.
i have not slept in five years.
i called you to come carry me away and
you swallowed me up instead.
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet living in California. Her work has been published in The Offing, The Feminist Wire, PEN America, and elsewhere. Her full-length poetry collection THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS will be released this month (August) through Civil Coping Mechanisms. More of her work can be found at joshuajenniferespinoza.com and on Twitter @sadqueer4life.
