We Have Always All Been Part of Everything

In Celebration of Trans Day of Visibility (& the Lively Unveiling of Spring)

I’ve always had a gift for being invisible. Though I wasn’t born until ten days after I was due, there was concern up until the moment of my birth that I had not fully developed and would be dangerously small. I was over 8 pounds, as it turned out. Apparently curled so tightly into myself as to become smaller than I was. This would continue to be a theme throughout childhood, being at points virtually mute, or when I did speak, sometimes unable to be heard at all. Even now in my mid-40s, I can be so inadvertently quiet that I occasionally jump scare my poor partner when I have imperceptibly floated across the apartment without warning.

Being invisible has in many ways been protective. It was a way to stay out of the line of fire in a childhood home full of volatility and rage. It was a way to escape bullying, by and large, even though I was an obviously queer teenager, a gender non-conforming girl (before gender non-conforming was a term anyone used, before I knew I could be anything but a girl).

Of course, aren’t we all a bit paradoxical? Despite this knack for invisibility, I also had bouts of bringing ill-advised attention to myself. At 12, a friend and I declared National Weird Day and I showed up to school wearing a shirt with shoulder pads, turned inside out, just a little winged weirdo walking around junior high like standing out was no big deal. This went on for at least a year or two. And when kids would laugh or ask me if I knew my shirt was inside out (or that my shoes and socks were mismatched), I would shrug it off and leave them speechless for a change. And so no longer invisible, I was now visibly unflappable. No use messing with the weirdo who knows what they are.

Throughout my twenties, I struggled with being seen more than I wanted to be seen, and being seen mostly incorrectly. Only I couldn’t figure out what way might even be correct. I was fairly sure I wasn’t a woman but didn’t think man quite fit either, and in the early 2000s, there was less of a concept of being outside of the binary. Just before I turned 30, I started to medically transition, settling on identifying more or less as a trans man because it seemed closer to the truth at least, and have drifted back toward the center, embracing myself as some kind of blend of masculine and feminine (to the extent that these terms even mean anything), not quite interested in fitting anywhere gender-wise but in my own skin, not caring so much about gender in recent years, like I did in early transition, glad to feel like a comfortable whatever. I am fine with the default assumption that I am a man most of the time. It is a better-fitting default. But still not seen quite right, particularly as I am usually now assumed to be a cis man, another layer of invisibility, even as it can also be a layer of safety and privilege.

And as we enter this age of authoritarianism in which binary gender and rigid binary gender expression seems to be on the verge of being legally mandated for us all (trans, cis, or otherwise), visibility is taking on new meaning. I find myself naming my transness a bit more readily these days, however dangerous that may have become. But that kid who knew they were a weirdo and embraced it seems to be inhabiting me again. There’s a fierceness to that quiet awkward kid. A refusal to be too small, and I feel such love for them for finding the courage to be so delightfully defiant even in their continued quiet.

While sometimes it’s hard not to descend into terror (just as they want us to) and worry about the violence that might be done to us for being unapologetically who we are, the ways they might take our freedom from us, none of that stops me from insisting on being this middle-aged queer non-binary trans person, naming myself, refusing to justify my existence. Their limitations are not my problem. And if they become my problem, if they do end up resorting to violence and incarceration to fully and absurdly scapegoat us? Well, so be it. I’m not going down in capitulation. I’m going to go out being exactly the soft queer trans person I am. A softness made of far stronger stuff than these weak people who feel the need to try to control other people’s relationships to their bodies and the ways they move in them. They are not going to succeed in killing me from the inside.

And I will keep on finding joy in the love of other lovely tender people, my pets, the trees. I will keep writing poems to remind myself I am alive and a being of creation, not destruction. I will laugh, I will eat good food, I will continue to inhabit my body in a way I never could before I embraced the fullness of who I am, to follow the rhythms of my breath. To name what’s right and true. I will keep on being my trans self and be part of everything, as we have always all been part of everything. Even when we have been invisible.

Some poems meditating on the theme of trans visibility in turbulent times:

As We Tease the Precipice of Death

If this should be the end
of the world I’m not going 
to spend a single second more
being any smaller than I am
I will not fail 
to name evil to its face
I will not hide

My eyes will trace
the crisscrossing of all the branches
and the veins of every leaf
I will love well
every sunset’s hue
every kind soul
every saucy look my little dog gives
every laugh that catches me off guard
and turns my cheeks to salt
every rise and fall of every wave 
and every breath
every crisp shadow blooming 
upon the sun’s illumination

I will forgive my mistakes
and maybe yours
if you are trying too
to be a human awake
to all this pain 
we stupidly cause
and all the devastating
shine in us

They Don’t Expect Us

I feel the edges of shame but eye them
suspiciously. This is not mine. They want us
to believe it is unsafe to breathe 
our own bodies, to shrink the tiny trees
inside our lungs so small no movement
is required. They want us children
hiding furiously under the bed, desperate
to stay unnoticed. But even children know
when punishment is overwrought.
They seek to deaden us or lure us
into rage crimes so in either case
we’re locked away. They aren’t prepared
for how creative we will be, the joy
in our disruption, the grace in our
refusal to relinquish our own rhythm.

Unwithered

I am done with invisible.
I will not conceal the edges
that don’t fit or make rough
the too-softness of me.
Go ahead and come for me.
I will meet my end
with my full authentic chest,
scars angling up toward
the sun’s beaming face.

Transmutability

Energy thrills through me:
they can’t conceive of all 
that we can be or do, how 
we transform their hate 
into our love like mud into wine. 
We metabolize their garbage 
so exquisitely. They destroy;
we create. I used to destroy 
myself so well, but now 
their meanness spurs me on 
to being mercilessly gentle.

Thank you for reading and partaking in my bit of trans rebellion and celebration. Happy Trans Day of Visibility to my trans and otherwise gender-expansive siblings! And to our allies who also celebrate us in a time when that celebration and support is sorely needed!

Photos taken by me at Green-Wood Cemetery, mostly spring 2024