On Arrival

The Last Hours

Yesterday was anxiety

And so is today

There’s so much to be anxious about

All the terrible

What-Ifs

Spiral through my thoughts

I keep myself numb

Until it’s too late

To turn back

But I know this is the way

Goodbye

To all that

Could have been

Was I cisgender

I don’t care.

He never existed.

Only she remains.

To all that

Could have been

Had this happened earlier

Better late than never.

Plus, I’m pretty tall.

And I don’t mind the rest.

And so it all ends

In a 7 minute walk

Followed by

40 minutes

On the subway

And a final

11 minutes on foot

5 years

6 months

1 week

Since I was set

On this course

The countdown continues

I’m saying goodbye

To everything

Because it’s always

The Last

The Last Breakfast

The Last pack of pop-tarts

The Last songs

The Last minutes of gameplay

Counting down to what feels like

My own death

When does the “Last before”

Become the “First since”

I can’t wait

These are a pair of poems I wrote yesterday in the lead up to starting HRT. This morning I already felt a decent bit better, as if my baseline had jumped from 4/10 to 6/10 overnight. This poetry drop is the emotional counterpoint to my intellectual article on the topic yesterday. Everything isn’t always seen from the perspective of years after the fact and the rose-tinted glasses of the knowledge that the story has a happy ending. I want to show the raw and emotional side of this big event and not have the only history be one of logic and calculus winning out over emotion and irrationality. I was scared for a lot of reasons, a lot of them completely irrational.