#moth-party

What’s he listening to? (Wrong answers only)

Redraw of that fuckass Dramatical Murder screenshot (under the readmore)

climber’s hands

On one of the many election nights that month

I am sprawled out at the foot of your bed,

An arm lying out in your direction

Head turned far to one side,

Watching the news with you from your laptop screen.

A woman comes on, a politician,

hands folded over rosy blazer,

backdropped by a real bookshelf

and you say,

“I’m worried that’s a trans woman.”

You say,

“Look at those coarse hands.”

I don’t look at her hands.

I look at you.

Still staring plain at the screen,

Not so much as the courtesy of

“not that that’s wrong”

Maybe you think you’re exempt because you were raised

right alongside those not-wrong women

Grew up weaving your way

between their sleek sinewed shins

at adults’ excuses for birthday parties,

or at least that’s what I imagine,

Claim you had college friends

who tenderly kneaded neon into your hair

With coarse hands.

Well, I thought this made you exempt too,

Exempt from the first step, not the second

I say all of this in one cautiously

casual question,

not even, I say,

“that’s kinda...”

And you say “that came out wrong,

but you get it.” You say,

“Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

No... that’s not what you said.

To be precise, you said,

“you know what I mean.”

I do.

That’s what’s so horrible. I know what you mean.

But... do you? Do you know what you mean?

Do you know what I mean, the swallowed words that

should have followed

“that’s kinda...”?

It’s not “that’s kinda questionable”,

not “that’s kinda weird”,

not “that’s kinda... you know”.

It’s That’s kinda transphobic.

It’s that’s kind of a terrible thing to say for trans women’s sakes,

That’s kinda creepy that that calculation,

that judgement even crossed your mind

Never mind ridiculous for you to worry about, why

would you worry about a “not-wrong” woman finally

helming this swerving ship, that’s kinda blasphemous

to spit in the faces of those incredible people,

ancestors who gave us so much of what we have,

your child lying right here,

curled at the foot of your bed,

one recoiling arm still stretched in your direction,

Look at these coarse hands.

Callused by the humble, strenuous work

of building myself from nothing

but the trees around me,

Planted by other callused hands, maybe,

Soft with youth and yet coarse

from the friction of my learning palms

slowly molding the concrete of what you once believed

into something like shelter,

something like a statue, with arms hospitable

to the over-sanded shape of me,

to hold me

when the soft, violent hands of the world

do not know how.

Look at these coarse hands.

Look me in the eye

And tell me you are worried, still,

Worried your motherly instinct will recognize

He’s kind of baby girl to me