Ally > Recent Status Updates

He didn't need to know about the hand in the crowd, about the shove. I wouldn't have been able to get the words out if I wanted to.

[this theme of how we protect those around us from the full extent of the garbage we face, is so well threaded through the book, but especially here - I both feel too seen and want to scream.]

This sound I didn't even know how I could make escaped my throat, halfway between a goose honk and an eighteen-wheeler horn.

[first trans honk, iconic]

We hadn't talked about whether we were dating or not, or if either of us was thinking about it, or if that was something we even wanted. We just happened to be exes that made out sometimes, you know? Nothing complicated about it at all.

[6 month speedrun to lesbian mess, impressive]

When she kissed me, it was soft and hesitant and sweet. I'd never been kissed like this. Like I was delicate. Like I might break.

After a moment, she pulled back. "Okay?"

[ahhhhhhhhh]

[I had the onside kick pegged for act 4, not act 2! Is she gonna end up at QB or something!? Faking an extra point for a 2?]

...I'd always opted for 23 if I could get it. I'm not gonna spell out why I used to wear that number, since I'm sure you can put 2 and 2 together, but I definitely wanted a change.

[Michael Jordan's number - hilarious, I'd never given a thought to dead-numbering]

Little Grace excited about larkspur!! (Also my flower, though not because the other ones are too girly!)

I'm a big fan of second person for pre-transition, it's so efficient at capturing the ambient dissociation of it. I wonder it feels like for cis readers - is that something that's gettable or does second person ask them to relate more closely to boy-Grace?

I adore Jen Richards, but what girl a few months in has the golden voice of a fish 40-something??

what i've said: i am no one.

what i meant to say: i have abandoned nothing.

[...]

what past are you staring at.

i already know
there is no body
behind me.

- "i say I am tranz and"

what i've said: i am no one.

what i meant to say: i have abandoned nothing.

[...]

what past are you staring at.

i already know
there is no body
behind me.

- "i say I am tranz and"

friend died. cat died. i finally took a breath and nothing
changed except i'm not sucking off men who make beats

with their roommates, am sturdy in my refusal to eat ass
for anything less than an "i love u" text.

- "one dose of anxiety meds later"

kids I grew up with

weren't queer where I could feel it. my first kiss
was an assault. my second concert was one direction.

- "god is a suspect male musician"

trans art is a question
the answer is always

- "ode to panic"

...Mom had been an Excellence Scholar at their nearby sister campus...

[Oops, I guess I'll have to wait on that.]

On the door is an intricate engraving of the same crest printed on half of Mom's sweatshirts.

[multiple generations of trans folks in a family? yessss please, a thing I see a bunch of in real life and have never seen in a story]

"Hey! What did you think of Rebel Cupcake?"
"It was fun!" said Lizzy.
"You go to Rebel Cupcake?" said Annie.
"Shut up," said Lizzy.
"Yeah," said Wheatsie. "Like, I've had fun there, dude, but I feel like for a queer space, it's not always a welcoming environment to trans women, you know?"
"Yeah, that's bugged me too!" said Lizzy.

[Can't tell - is this story intentionally a parody of 2010s Brooklyn Trans Lady Lit?]

I know what they say of the hiss
of vanity, how it holds me
back from heaven. I know also
how grief folds my voice
into its back pocket. Don’t think
me dramatic. People have died
touch-starved, penniless.
I will not settle for anything
less than sunflowers. In every room, a vase full
of their ornate faces, bone-straight backs.
Everything keeping me alive is the most
beautiful.

- "I Am Too Pretty for This"

once I’m tricked into thinking I’m too old for miniskirts,
the glory of exposed thighs, large hoops? I imagine
my children squinting at old photos proof that I was a woman
_before_ them, thinking in this picture _my mama know she fine._

- "Ode to My Mama and 'The Purple Dress,' circa 1992-1993"

The sun nudges the curtains
open, draws me close
enough to kiss her heat.
I put on the lace, midday,
and pose—thigh cocked
over milk-drunk sheets.

- "Flo Milli Shit"

I ordered the Fenty
months before the last birth,
after the miscarriage drug
grief by its mangy neck
and left the remains—leaky, foul,
ruining my clean floor.

I tell myself I earned
the impractical—sex,
sheer panties, splurging—as
I rush to get my purse,
stepping over the bills
pooled at the front door.

- "Flo Milli Shit"

She swears she's here to stay,
but the only honesty is death.
She reminds me she'll meet the Lord
one of these days. I don't want Him
to have her. Forgive my blasphemy.
She's where I get my ornery tongue. She is where
I get my everything. You expect me
to give that up? I belong to this line
of daughters; before I was born, her kin.

- "Good Ground"

He didn't notice my polished toes / my doe legs smoothed with cocoa butter;
how carefully I shaved;

- "I Lost My Virginity After Making a Pact / 'To Become Women' with My Cousins"

We reach our arms across
the circulation desk and ask
for more than they have given us.

- "Self-Portrait as Detroit Public Library, Franklin Branch"

if we have to die,
let it be at 3 a.m.
after the music stops
after the liquor store closes
after the last rotation finds stillness
and there is no more basement to belong in.

- "Outro (A Better DJ)"

& i want to kill, like actually kill
the people engineering this brutal today
until there is a watered & peach-filled tomorrow
(but whose bloody yesterday would i be
if i don't plan to kill the children too?)

("craft", p. 137 - this adolescent murder fantasy runs through the whole collection and poisons the poems where it appears despite the dazzling form stuff)

what i'm sorry for: making poetry
into a house of rebuttals, a temple for the false
gods of stagnant argument & dead-end feels.

("ars poetica" p. 119)

maybe God's love is everything ends.

("love poem")

The Slap

[There's so much weird fantasizing about violence in this collection - here the speaker imagines white-knighting for Black women a la Will Smith at the Oscars while they wrestle with their own disrespect of them. The speaker never feels any agency about it - not guilt but only grief. Spending time with the speaker of these poems is a chore - they're so intensely self-focused while being so un-self-aware.]

In grade 5 we were asked to write about what we would be doing in the year 2000. I couldn't imagine myself living that long. I'd never make it to 27. But then, somehow, I did.