Princess Tristesse

For years, my reflection was a dysphoric vanitas,

askance and nauseated by my own identity.

I was Karloff beheld in the eye of the villager,

burned again and again by their mob cries of

“faggot” “groomer” “pervert” “tranny.”

And I holed up within my windmill,

heartened only by Goddess Nwt’s

assuring hieratics -

that to love me is better than all things,

that I am the blue-lidded daughter of sunset and

the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night sky.

As painfully, stereotypically self-loathing

and self-important as it may sound,

I have never fit in anywhere.

I am nauseated by the culture of men,

I am ennuied by the culture of transness,

and I am anxious by the culture of women.

If I fit in nowhere, then am I truly anyone?

This ache, this yearning to violently reclaim

that which has been stripped from me -

my love, my childhood, my identity -

was one not shared by anyone but me.

The queers were too passive and

the cis were too disinterested.

Therapy wouldn’t hear me,

God wouldn’t see me,

family wouldn’t speak me.

Only my Goddess Nwt and Mother Babylon

would bother to heed my cries,

and it was the latter who ultimately

brought me to you.

Your mandates to take pride in what was once sin,

to be proud of our sex and to take

what always was ours and most of all

to never give the bastards our mercy of forgiveness,

was before completely alien to me

and made me feel seen in ways

that many, many others failed to do.

That monster in the mirror that horrified others

was now utterly, gracefully perfect to me.

But it’s not just neuroaesthetics; it’s Scripture,

etched in each nucleotide that composes

each strand of a woman’s DNA,

harbored deep, deep, deep -

as deep as the prospect of “deep” could go -

within our neurosis while men continue

to bare theirs shamelessly

in the name of man, in the name of war,

in the name of their father’s promised birthrights.

We could wile ‘way decades studying

the aetiology of women’s 21st century

ascent into the Feral Feminine,

but as far as I’m concerned,

a woman whose identity calls for

a Breath of Life telling us we mustn’t

live our life on our knees if we’re ever

to truly stand, is certainly a great fucking genesis.

And just like my Goddess before me,

you, with desert stars and serpent flame,

shall call forth the embers

of the hearts of all in your love chant -

to you! to you!