My Gender

I fought with a guy over the bill on our first date.

He said, “but you’re a woman now! You need to get used to getting free things from men!

It’s a perk!”

I’ll never get used to it,

though I loved the feeling of his calling me a woman.

I found comfort in “she,”

in “her.”

My transwomanhood exists in a grey area.

Non-binary creates a spectrum mentality

we all think we’re used to,

but even a rainbow has a beginning and an end,

in most minds.

even that spectrum can fit on paper.

ROYGBIV.

We forget science class.

we forget that the number line is infinite.

that lines have no endpoints,

even if they have a “zero”

that is neither positive nor negative.

Zero in on this.

I’m so much more substantial than not.

I shouldn’t be “Zero”

or non-anything.

Defining myself on my own terms is one of the most wonderful opportunities

that God or the Goddess has given me.

My gender is a raincloud

miles away in the middle of a sunny day on

Kaimana Beach back home in O’ahu:

not touristy Waikiki,

but close enough that we still have to fight for parking

and a non-white perspective of beauty.

My gender is dancing in the rain

when that storm cloud breaks,

splashing in the water

and making mermaid kicks,

then sloshing back to shore.

My gender awakens in the ride back to Kristi’s house,

or Sue’s or Jasmine’s,

to prepare for a night out on the town.

My gender restores itself

in long drives back home,

no longer a Sisyphusean struggle

but a retreat to a place of respite,

always and forever filled with song,

most often a power ballad sung by my diva of the month.

My gender is a dormant dragon

awakened

by pestering hobbits and dwarves,

locked away with its riches for no one else to celebrate.

My gender is FURIOUS.

My gender is a volcano,

active but not erupting,

boiling lava,

allowing people to get close enough to smell my sulfur

and adore my beauty in wonder,

fear, amazement,

and confusion.

My gender has mystical powers.

My gender is the resilience after generations of trauma,

cleansing, colonizing, pillaging, erasing, and

forgetting.

My gender is sunrise, sunset, dusk and dawn.

My gender receives a standing ovation.

My gender need not lather, rinse and repeat

because it’s not able to be tamed

My gender is the lilting flower in the lily pond

when the wind starts to blow.

My gender gets tucked in at night

and loves the feeling of a prickly kiss

goodbye.

My gender is that kiss.

My gender knows no boundaries,

but is forever asked to play by the rules

of the State.

My gender is an escape

from the trappings of reality.