Woodworking

by Emily St. James

So dedicated was she to keeping anyone from examining her too closely that she missed everything else she was feeling. Her emotions were occurring in another room somewhere.

It’s a thing we transes can do. The second we learn who somebody is, we can make them snap into place. “There you are,” we say, because there you are.

You get creative about eating less. You don’t want to starve. You just don’t want the body you know you will grow into. You can’t even put words to that fear. You look in the mirror and see how skinny you are, how the bones press against your skin.

hello the waterworks are coming😭

It’s called woodworking. Someday, they will wake up, and you will be gone. To have a future, you cannot have a past. You will have to disappear into the woodwork to finally be seen. If Brooke is to live, then the person she was before must cease to exist. The choice is that simple. That stark.

When your mother kissed your scraped knee and put a bandage on it, you were going to escape. When you invited only girls to your fourth birthday party and your mom insisted you invite at least one boy, you were going to escape. When he hit you, you were going to escape. When he hit you with his belt, you were going to escape. When he put your rabbit in the attic and told you to stop being such a baby, you were going to escape.

The thing about a man like Isaiah is that you don’t have to know his particulars to know him. He is the same man everywhere. To try to understand him is to try to understand a sinkhole. He is sure of himself, and he likes feeling sure of himself, because he has built a world in which he can always be sure of himself. He is a feedback loop that exists only to perpetuate himself. I could tell you every word he said, and you could try to find meaning in it, and you would learn the meaning was always right there on the surface. He doesn’t need subtext because text is built to encompass him.

We are, none of us, a single set of destinies set by the accident of our birth. We can change and be changed. Our bodies know the language they must speak to make us the people we must become.