Post-op images
#12 of Poetry
On May 10, 2018, I underwent gender affirmation surgery, a vaginoplasty. It was a process that took two years of effort, and years more of dreaming.
It hurt.
It hurt a lot, and I was out on my back for days afterwards, first stuck in the hospital, then stuck in an Airbnb nearby. Recovery felt slow, despite my obvious progression through the days. So it was just me and my partners and my laptop, stuck in a small room, for days.
What better time to write and try to digest this huge thing I'd done?
Saturday is for mechanics. Sunday is for terror. Monday is for acceptance. Tuesday is for purging. Wednesday is for anxiety. Thursday is for sleep.
When I am asleep The world changes around me. In spring, I am changed.
I'm no good at images, only words, and yet for days after surgery, as anesthesia and countless milligrams, milliliters, millions of drugs leave my system, I'm lousy with visions, each lousy with meaning.
I lay in bed, unable to move, struggling to keep my eyes open; I know that if I close them, I'll be lost, I'll be lost, I'll be mired in waking dreams, coherent visions with all the logic of that paler side of consciousness.
Perhaps the veil here is still too thin and vague, the pool too clear, the monsters too scary too lean, too mean, too hungry, or perhaps I was too close to death to come away totally unscathed, too close to completely survive.
It's as though, laying here, stinking of hospital, I'm seeing emotions play out, Scene after scene, scene after scene, anxiety shown in heaps of discarded entrails, hope in the ceaseless ratcheting of gears, determination in the marching of feet.
If I were an artist, perhaps I could hope to touch these images, but as it is, every word falls short, too vague, too inexact, too tight to hope to explain something so vast by the very act of attempting to reproduce; I can only hint from the margins.
That poetry can accomplish what prose cannot in its economy of motion is attractive to me, here in recovery - so tired, so tired, so tired - so maybe I can hope to express the dire import of these visions dancing behind closed lids, or at least remind myself on rereading.
Even now, a week out, I'm starting to lose touch with the visions, I can almost touch them if I squint, lie real still, don't move now, but even then, a shadow of the substance... I'm starting to consign to memory that which was probably memory to begin with.
It is two hundred miles between what I expect and what I want. Two hundred long strides that seem impassible from one direction, and from the other a day's short drive.
It is nine and a half hours between question and answer. A half hour of jazz, nine hours of sleep, a scant second of perspective, and I can only traverse in one direction
It is eleven inches between who I was and who I am. Ten of those inches are pain, the eleventh is numb, There's pleasure to be had in there, I'm promised.
It is twelve years between what I want and what I get: Ten years of remembering who I will become, two years running, Eight days dreaming.
What have you changed?My mind_What changed you?_Nothing_What became of it?_I am not who I was
What have you changed?My name_What changed you?_The word_What became of it?_I am called who I am
What have you changed?My looks_What changed you?_The light_What became of it?_I am seen as I am
What have you changed?My chemistry_What changed you?_The substance_What became of it?_My form is my own
What have you changed?My body_What changed you?_The knife_What became of it?_I am shaped how I am
What have you changed? Nothing_What changed you?_I was accepted_What became of it?_I accepted myself
What have you changed?Everything_What changed you?_Everything_What became of it?_I became who I am