A Matter of Habit

 A transgender man and a transgender woman.

A Matter of Habit

“...you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it's done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on”

― Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable

You learned to make those stone-cold

don’t-fuck-with-me faces in fifth grade

while I excelled at English, math, and history.

I knew words, numbers, and dates

would never betray me.

In high school, we drifted away

as you sought the approval of boys. You sacrificed

half your humanity to fit in. I circled the edge

of the pool and dove in. For me, “outside” became a habit.

You stopped riding wooden horses

to the school cafeteria. I spoke “love” to boys in codes

like wetting my lips while staring at their legs

flying above the pommel horse.

Years later, I learned to laugh at the pile of rejected poems,

the overdrawn checking account, the rushed anniversary gifts,

In fact, I somehow managed to get over my The Crying Game moment.

I’d like to imagine you did the same, that after all the men

you’re happy dating girls, playing tackle football,

and pissing in the urinals.