Notes toward Top Surgery and the Impending Death of the Barrier Reef

Monday, July 16, 2018
//
 
When my breasts are finally removed
I imagine they will be made
into mountains              elsewhere.
A popular hiking destination, 
the boys will hold
what used to be my body
up, and on a pedestal, 
or perhaps
they will climb 
until something structural 
breaks, and the mountain
plateaus into just 
an average, flat,
topography.  
\\
 
//
 
In this life, fire lives 
in the water
rent free and swan 
boats are the last 
viable mode of transportation. 
Romance in the new millennium 
is two trans boyskissing
     as bird necks wrap
     their wrists
     too tight. 
My partner talks about my top 
surgery like I have never 
even considered true     stillness. 
They talk about bed    rest 
on a salt water raft—   floating 
with no oars                 for months. 
How thirsty can two boys on a raft 
become? They say,    you will not 
turn      crescents into      blood 
moons with blown stitches
They say, you will never be the same.
Isn’t that something.
\\
 
//
 
As a child I read and reread 
the story of a girl who wore a forest 
green ribbon round her neck for a lifetime. 
And as she lay dying, the ribbon
was untied, her head hit the floor, 
the forest was slashed and burned. 
At her funeral everyone was talking 
about the benefits of deforestation, 
and guillotines. 
What is a whole life of denying 
the truth of your body’s
shape? If I am used to wrapping
my chest in an Ace bandage, 
does that mean I’ve always
been bleeding? 
\\
 
//
 
Everyone in America speaks fluid laceration, 
with their diamond studded 
tongues. Oral sex
is the new corn field 
tilled until death do us part. 
God, agriculture is so violent, 
and I have lusted toward blood-rust:
the hoe, the scalpel, a sharp rake,
and a rototiller pushed across 
my mammary glands. Milk as Miracle-
Gro. God, I wish I could touch 
myself with any tenderness, any soft, 
human, tool. 
\\
 
//
 
They say anesthesia
is an ocean
of calm,until
oil hitsthe water. 
Intubationis an anchor 
until 
it’s snagged 
on the ocean floor. 
 
Complications of double 
mastectomies include: 
clogged coral, burst arteries,
death. But already when pelicans 
open their mouths
 
the world 
 
only remembers
 
how to say 
 
pothole and point
a swollen finger
anywhere but
 
inward. 
 
It is true,
 
the reef 
is almost dead.
But I  am
 
almost 
not. 
\\
Monday, July 16, 2018