Bare

In a late night introspective mood, I stood in front of my mirror after the shower, smoothing the humidity off the silver glass, and running a hand through wet curls. It was with a sudden widening of eyes I realized  I was admiring my body…. for perhaps the first time ever.

The towel hung limp, forgotten.

There’s something unfathomable, intangible about this whole experience, of shifting into the person I should have been all along. I can’t explain how one day I seem to suddenly catch sight of myself and feel startled into a sense of feeling more “awake”. Suddenly notice the changes that have been creeping to the front, a little at a time, everyday. Such was my midnight mirror-gazing, leaning forward as though to convince my eyes; noticing muscles that have never grown until now, risen like pale hills and valleys on this changeable landscape. I notice veins that stand off from the muscles like rivers, coursing, as though heavy with water after the snow melting from mountaintops. I notice fresh skin, unfreckled, untouched by sun, stretched around my chest muscles and back and belly. A little weight shifted there, a little thinner here. And yet the crooked smile remains, and the quick green eyes I inherited from my mother. I may be a shapeshifter. I may have shed my old skin like a snake growing old, but there are clues of the person I’ve been all along, the person I was, and the person I will become. And the Truth is here, standing, staring at me from the mirror.

His beard is coming in and he wears it scraggly; a proud teenager with an old man’s eyes, his body somewhere inbetween the two. His mouth sometimes forgets how to smile but his ears never stop listening. He’s tired. His heart is heavy in his chest made of lead, feet made of clay, and with a stiffened white hand, he draws the towel over himself like a curtain closing. He lowers his eyes and no longer looks at me; with methodical habit-learned quickness, he shaves, brushes his teeth, and turns out the light.

In the morning, the man in the mirror wakes with a snoring silver cat wrapped over his stomach, the pair looking like a drunken after-party, his naked, muscled leg sticking out from under a patched blue quilt. His face sounds like a velcro fastener on the pillow as he turns his head, and he stops, eyes wide. That’s new. He turns his head again and again, making the scratching sound with the stubble of his own beard, grinning like someone doused with wine, given over to silliness.

The cat wakes grumbling, gold eyes glaring a moment before going back to sleep; she is used to his antics and forgives him.

In these moments, I am laid bare to myself. I spend so much time in my own head, sitting on a therapist’s couch, in a group therapy session, on a friend’s floor, helping a customer at work; so rarely am I truly myself - the boy I was at age 8 who wanted to be an inventor. The young man at age 13 who was reading Shakespeare in his garden to wild rabbits. The college student who listened to classical pieces and grinned with dirt on his face as he shaped clay into bowls and dishes, whirling in his hands on a mud-stained wheel. So rarely am I myself; so busy am I interacting with the world, turning myself into the listening ear strangers need, quickly honing in on what is expected of me in each and every social situation, that I never step out of these roles and say with truth: “Hello, I am Milo.”

And I want that to change. I want to share my Truth with you, if you’ll only listen, if you’ll only let me in, if only I can trust you with this piece that’s been broken so many times before. This Milo is still the 8 year old inventor and he is frightened of this world. Yet he still holds out his hands in greetings, though they tremble.

Hello, I am Milo, and you are my friend.

I am Milo and if you would like, I am going to read you my favorite poem.

I am Milo, and this is a new piece of art I’ve made.

I am Milo and today I have been on T for 10 months.

Hello, I am Milo, and in this rare moment, I don’t care what anyone thinks and I love myself.

Laid bare;

I am left with nothing but affirmations.

And this:

This second in time is a clear piece of glass. Hold it up to your eye, and feel silly and watch the world warble within it. Or let the warm sun come through it and watch the light spread into colors on your floor.

Let his moment split wide open for you.

The man in the mirror smiles at me and he has never done that before.

Tangled Stone Heart

The bed was hard, the hallways were long, and they lived in my memory like bats in an attic. My skin and clothes had been drenched in fear. I had screamed, once, twice. I had clung to the door weeping like a broken child.

But it was not so now. I shooed the bats away, lifting my face to the sun.

I stood free, and alone, under the biggest sky I knew, in brand new skin. Little clouds drifted past. Please don’t flow so fast. With grass surrounding my feet, I felt whole again. I remembered who I was and filled my lungs with clean air.

Under my arm, my notebook rested, cooling off from the three hours of therapy where I scribbled notes and drew flowers when I was angry. There was a rubber-band around the covers to deter prying fingers; those who saw my drawings wanted to see more, asked, pleaded, which left me in a hard place of flattered and resentful. I felt like I was made of bark and did not move. Pretended to not hear them. No, they couldn’t see the thorny garden in this notebook. Would not let them, because these drawings came from such a dark place. When I was ready to share, it would be careful, methodical, out of peace and gentleness. Which was perhaps backwards for an artist, who often made works from pain and despair. But not I. Not this time. It would be a breech birth.

Under my arm the notebook jostled against my heavy chest as I walked from the long and low brick building built in the 1950’s out under the shade of trees. The building made of hard beds and long hallways, of nurses and psychiatrists. The parking lot and road fell away as I strode away from it. I saw a little stone foot-path to my left veer away, looping around, and I ignored it, stepping off. I wanted grass and trees and sky.

I walked until my ribs hurt and my hands were shaking. I hadn’t taken into account the anxiety, weakening my body. Sitting now, carefully laying down the notebook. I breathed and my ribs hurt less. The trunk of a sycamore cradled my back.

My eyes focused on the wind and the branches and movement all around, ignoring the tug at my brain to daydream. Staying present was so exhausting. If I didn’t watch every thought come and go like little sparrows flitting away at a bird bath, I would dissociate and wander off from my body and sit in cold places where no one could find me. It was not safe to do so. I had learned that recently, and my notebook recorded the bloody discovery like a black box after the crash.

I kept my eyes busy, and there was so much to look at. Spring was finally hitting, and leaf buds were mint colored and covered in soft down. I watched a ladybug clean her face on a dandelion, antennae waving wildly, tongue unfurling.

Craning my neck, there was a gentle rolling hill and a wide flat area of cement. Wide flat cement but no parking lot. No basketball goal. I couldn’t quite make it out. Left over from an earlier site, a floor to a forgotten building? A relic? I climbed to my feet, my stiff legs protesting. Limped for the first ten steps before my stride evened out again. Curiosity willed me onward when all my body wanted was rest.

The hill proved more difficult than it looked, and at the top, I stood like a conqueror, the muscles in my thighs and calves fluttering with exhaustion, the wet grass sticking to my sneakers as I set my first steps on the mysterious sun-bleached concrete.

It was a labyrinth.

Rather, a painted maze on a poured stone slab, and here, I circled to the beginning where I purposefully laid down my books and set out, head held high, as though I knew the steps, knew the secrets of this place, knew the heart of it. Shoes moved with intent, through the faded blue lines; round and round I wove.

But my confidence faltered as I walked, eyes darting ahead to follow where a future decision might lead me to a dead end. I felt unsure of my legs and my path and where I was going. I questioned what I was doing and whether this was a waste of time, feeling the suck and pull of chores, bills to be paid, things to be cleaned. Because fast-paced, rocky adulthood did not have room for moments to breathe, to play. To recover.

I closed my eyes a second and opened them again, seeing my sneakers and labyrinth in a new light.

This, was a tool. This, a place of healing. Keeping the body moving, keeping the mind from dissociating, keep the eyes awake and aware. As continued onward, walking again, I discovered its purpose. It was not left in the woods, forgotten. No, it was a treasure, designed to be wrapped in a place of quiet and solace, walled in by leaves instead of roads. It was a pearl on its oyster bed, submerged in the sea.

And I was old. I felt older than this earth, this tree, this sky. I felt my body ache, felt my scattered heart beats, uneven; felt the medication in my blood working to make me young again, failing.

In the center in the maze, I stopped. Unable to take any more.

I froze.

Breathed.

Watched the mint green buds sway in the wind.

And realized with a sudden start I had solved it. The point was the make it to middle.  And there, lay a straight path back out.

I emerged humble, and a little younger than before.  I stood free, and alone, under the biggest sky in brand new skin. With my books in hand, I left the comfort and shade of the woods and walked bare headed under the sun, the light hot on my dark hair, my thoughts warm and clear as I drove home.

How to cultivate

Because 

We were once sweet, young golden-eyed things with an intelligent face 

Once craning our necks to get a glimpse 

Of the bright future

Fingers locked in a tight embrace. 

Once 

All play fights, domestic cooking and pillow talk. 

And

blood stained pages 

Tore 

Apart -

We choke 

We balk - 

Because 

In dark desert streets, 

They lay me down 

They lacerate my clothes and skin 

Brought out my true identity from deep within.

Ashes, ashes, 

We all fall down. 

We all 

Fall - 

I sat in the office 

Pulling threads at the worn 

seat cushions of the blue therapist's couch. 

Refusing to talk. 

Crumple,

Slouch. 

Listen close to how my ribs break 

How my even measured breathing 

Turns raspy, gasping 

Because 

"Don't be afraid

Don't be afraid",

They keep telling me; and to be fair, its clear they're dismayed. 

But the misguided means of comfort, thinking a prayer will solve an arterial wound? 

an idiot's bandaid. 

"Comfort"? No, 

Conformity.


And my shadow sags against the wall in exhaustion, falling back into quiet routine with a smart snap 

Like a guillotine. 

I am not quite recovered
from my skeletal years.
I snarl,
close to tears. 

We were once golden eyed things 

With romantisized memories of harps and wings - 

And now
and now
we all fall down. 

Ernest Hemmingway

It is fall.

He sits at his desk, eyes glazed in some far-off thought, face drawn as dark things best left buried begin to stir in the late hour; begin to open their coffins and rise from their beds of grave dirt to haunt the hollow hallways of his mind. His hands are stilled, in their usual position: thin white fingers curled over a black keyboard. They are silent and waiting. They are nervous soldiers, standing at attention for orders that may never come.

And the commander lets out a latent sigh, no longer seeing his walls; this weary creature struggles only to discern the future, or what little he has left of it. And time and time again, his divinations fail, returning blank and empty handed. The crystal balls are cracked, in the wake of his cheerless shadow. The cards are burned. Teacups smashed.

If previous episodes of this nature had any evidence to show, several hours would have passed like this,

were it not for the sudden jab of  pain in his chest.

The tired eyes suddenly flicker from their barren visions, and a pale hand rises, presses against his heart as another blow comes. This time, worse. The breath leaves him, and his shoulders bow inward as his heart flutters wildly like a bird trapped in the maw of a bear-trap.

And he can only see blackness.

It’ll pass, he says to himself. It’ll pass, it’ll pass.
Ignore it.

Breathe.

Following his own demand,  he draws in a shaky lungful of air, but suddenly stops, holding it, as his ribs seize too. A long string of curses erupt in his mind, when a flood of pain takes over.

It stabs, stabs, stabs, with every white-hot heartbeat. It radiates to his back. His shoulders. Through his ribs and up his neck. Like a wildfire, it spreads, eating at every taut muscle and sinew like dry kindling. Trapped in its clutches, he can do nothing but ball his fist against his chest and try to breathe once more.

He turns his head to search for an orange medication bottle - but oh, a terrible mistake, as he hits an absolute burning wall, and his throat closes in; he gasps with the motion and nearly chokes. Rolling his eyes with a frantic frustration, he grits his teeth and tries to stand, groaning with the effort.

The agony brings him to his knees, chair crashing to the floor behind him. His arms wrap around his chest, and his eyes shut tight, a high, pathetic sound escaping his broken throat and clenched jaw. And he waits. Head bowed. Legs crumpled beneath him. Frozen from where he fell, too terrified to try to move again.

He knows when he is beaten.

Several minutes pass, and at length, the grip of pain lessens. Tentatively, carefully, he moves his head, and finds it free of consequence. His heart still rails against its cage, his hand never moving from its aching position, but there is enough freedom now to jump at the opportunity. Dizzy, he climbs to his feet and finds the orange medication bottle mixed in with its many brethren, all in disarray on the coffee table. Shakily, slowly, he removes his hand from his chest only long enough to pry off the cap. He accepts the white pill on his tongue, like a wafer from a priest, and he takes it with a sip of afternoon-warm water, bitterly wishing it were wine.

...He knows that the ache will remain for several hours still, but the seizing muscles finally rest after a handful of minutes, and at last, he exhales heavily, his shoulders dropping with some relief. He presses his face against the cool wood of the chipped coffee table for a moment and just enjoys the act of free breathing, as his heart begins to slow its mad pace.

At length, he remembers his original task - answering a single email - and he returns to his desk, trying to forget about the episode, trying to move on. Thoughts begin to reform, lines connecting from point to point, where they had been interrupted. Threads reunited.The chair is hauled upright, the papers reorganized.

And one sticks out from the rest.

A small yellowed note, once taped to his monitor, some years ago. Scrawled in a calligraphy ink, when he’d gone through that particular artistic phase.

Write hard and clear about what hurts.

He swallows, and moves like a sleepwalker, laying the paper down with gentleness, letting a bitten fingernail linger over the words as though a long forgotten lover’s letter. A familiar forlorn look enters his face. Recognizing the famous quote and the implications its had in his life over the course of a decade.

Sinking into his chair, his hands return to their usual position, standing at the ready.

Alright.

What hurts? he asks himself.

Everything, comes the reply.

But it was too much to tackle as a subject, and his fingers leave their black keyboard to rest at his temples, and brush away the sudden, surprising beginnings of hot tears. Everything was overwhelming. Everything was his harrowing past, his luckless present, and his desolate future. Everything threatened to drown his lungs in dark water and chew through his stomach with horrendous angler-fish teeth.  His anxious heart rallies again, and his breath catches in his chest, this time free of physical pain, but, in pain nonetheless. In a routine mental exercise, he shoves it all away, crams all the noise behind the wrought iron doors in the hallway of his head. He shouts at them until they quiet,

and at last, his eyes are dry.

But.

This is not what Hemmingway meant, he thinks to himself. His head is still in his hands.

There is another note.

He pulls the yellow corner free from the pile of loose drawings, watercolor splashes, and overdue bills. The same inky hand is scrawled here too, and he sighs.

There is nothing to writing.

All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

His mouth twists, and he grips his shoulder still raw with last night’s self-inflicted wounds.

Truth, he says.

He lays the two notes side by side, and his hands are restored for the third time to their keyboard. He bows his head, thinking.

And ultimately,

reluctantly,

the doors are swung open,

the orders given,

and the weary creature is honest with himself.

----------------------------------

don't know if I should own up to this, but. 

true story. 

esophageal and diaphragm spasms are a real bitch. believe you me. 

they often cause heart palpitations and panic attacks.

medication mentioned is hyoscyamine, a muscle relaxer.

quotes are all from ernest hemmingway. 

richter scale

“You…” he began, situating himself squarely in front of me on the couch. “You’ve been in bed so much. Never getting up. And I just.” He looked up at me with the same piercing eyes that I so long ago fell in love with. “I don’t want to be in this relationship anymore,” he stated. Directly. To the point. Without blinking.

My eyes fell and I nodded.

Like scene from a goddamn movie.

Unreal.

He continued talking but I never heard him. I didn’t want to cry. I’d braced myself for this inevitable moment, feeling the initial tremors of this earthquake months and months ago. But. Within seconds, in absolutely shame... I collapsed in rib-seizing sobs, choking on my own breath as everything, every thread that was tentatively holding me together, was snapped in twain.

false promise

There is a grating sound, like a plastic rake dragged over a driveway, as the blade creeps across my skin still raw from the desert. It cuts. Again and again. The blood drips in a thick rivulet from the top of my shoulder down to my elbow. Drips onto the bathroom tile in a tidy red splash.

With dull eyes, I stare. And get lost.

You are one sick puppy, a voice says in my head.

I'm....I know I am, but maybe...maybe if I had help? Maybe if someone cared? Maybe I could stop, another voice argues meekly. ...Please.

And there is discordant laughter.

Minutes? Hours? A day? passes.

I come out of my catatonic state, and brush my hand over eyes, brimming with hot tears. All at once, its back again, in the usual overwhelming tide. The fear. The hurt. The chaos.

The pain.

I stir like a sleepwalker, and reach for the rubbing alcohol.

The breath hisses between my teeth, and I grimace with a cold fury as I scrub the congealed mess away, uncovering the fresh wounds again. They ooze once more, awakening. I hold them closed with one hand, and turn on the shower with the other. Awkwardly, I kick off my clothes.

And with my head hung low, eyes dry as water poured down my face, watching the pink rivulets wash off my body and into the drain.

Its a lot of pink.

Can’t keep doing this.

The laughter comes again, recognizing that age-old, false promise.

8/06 A transitional vision

He shut the car door with a grimace, sinking into the familiar grey cloth seat with something of a repressed sigh.

It was another day that had not gone well; hadn’t been easy. But he was here again. He had survived. It was something a skill set he’d learned over many years, this survival thing. Of keeping his head down, and working hard. Taking jobs when he could find them.

This is no different, he told himself.

Except it was.

His face, his name, his voice had changed. The way society treated him, if they figured out the truth, had been the hardest thing to overcome. It hurt less now than it initially did, but there were still stings from time to time that lingered. Comments people made, usually unwittingly, but they stayed with him. He did his best to build up a thicker skin and ignore it, but it was a hard process that took time. Today was one of those days where a comment had dug itself right into his heart, and its barbs took hold, infecting the young man with pain and a quiet rage.

“You’re a pretty boy,” the older woman had said.

“Ah. Thank you,” he murmured.

“No, I mean that,” the woman pressed, tilting her head to one side. “You kinda  look like a girl.”

“Mm?” Milo countered. Too afraid to open his mouth to make words; too afraid the bubbling anger always just below the surface  would lash out at this insensitive grandma.

“Why do you look like a girl?” the woman asked, before her family was at her side, taking her to a new part of the store. “That man is a woman,” she told them. And they laughed, and threw backward glances at the worker,  now with his head hung low, cleaning windows.

I’m not passing well enough to fool an old woman, he thought bitterly. What am I doing wrong?

Milo shook his head to himself, and started the car, starting the drive home. His music blared as loudly as a teenager’s and he grinned sardonically.

Home was a collection of lost boys - a large house on the edge of a field, a social worker’s experiment, always renting rooms to misfits who needed places to stay. In the spring and fall, a couple kind farmers would stop by looking for hands, and the work was hard, but good. Despite Milo’s small build and varied health problems, he often joined a farmer and relished the early sunrises, stacking hay. Feeding chickens. Looking after horses. He couldn’t carry or lift as much as the other men, but what he lacked in strength, he made up for in knowledge, his pursuit in medical sciences often enabling him to lend a hand when an animal fell ill.

As much as he enjoyed this life, there were moments when reminders from the west coast would return and something inside would let loose an empty pang. It was a familiar twinge, something he grew up feeling repeatedly, having moved several times as a kid; missing his old life. This was the same, never fully happy in one home; lived in too many places, found too many lovely things to simply be at peace in any one location. At times it drew him to keep moving, keep finding new places to live, like a gypsy's blood thudded in his heart.

I am forever running away, he scrawled on his wall late one night.

Despite the quiet mornings on farmland, life at the house was often loud, and he felt that he was rather old to be living a “dorm”-like experience; yet considering his only other option was to live out of his car again? Milo stayed, paid his dues, and appreciated the hell out of his bed.

Some of the kids here were drug addicts, some came from abusive families. Some were more like him; they lounged with pubescent sort of awkwardness as their testosterone, or in some cases, estrogen, took hold, shaped their bodies over the course of several months. He didn’t always know all of their names, but he kept tabs on them, made sure they were alright. Every once in a while, one of them would confide in him and he’d make tentative friends. Everyone here was friendly enough - they waved as he came in the door, and he smiled back, speaking as little as he had to, taking a beer from the fridge before going up his room.

Milo was thankful they understood that he needed his privacy.

He took a swig of his beer as he sat down on the edge of his bed, pulling his desk closer to him, looking over the last notes he’d written before going to sleep last night. His refurbished laptop hummed happily as his fingers flitted over the keyboard, picking up where he’d left off.

Behind him, chaos reigned in his room. Textbooks lay open, haphazard on another, bigger desk in the corner. Half finished paintings were stacked against his closet. Discarded clothes lay in small piles. And the walls were a sheer collage of polaroid photos, drawings, watercolor splatters.

Rounds of  schizophrenic and PTSD episodes in his youth had left him scarred in more ways than one; the photographs on the walls told these stories in varied artistic fashions. They spoke of the pain of his past, loud and clear; he was never far from difficult reminders. It was perhaps another facet of his self-destructive personality speaking, not allowing him to ever forget.

The scars on his shoulders, hands, legs, and chest certainly never did.

The warmth of the late summer air suddenly seemed stifling to him, and he turned on a fan, opening his window that looked out onto the fields. He paused a moment, fingers exploring the stubble on his chin, watching little specks of light flicker on and off below, in the yard. Fireflies, coming in from the tall grasses. He smiled a happy memory from days long gone and withdrew, instead now moving to his second desk. He unbuttoned his shirt as he went, removing it, and then pulling off the v-neck underneath. Milo ran a distracted hand over his sore chest, fingers pausing at the puckered scars still healing.

His tired eyes went to a row of photos by his door; the faces of the family members who never spoke to him, the friends he barely kept in touch with. The man he had loved, and still did. His loneliness threatened to swallow him whole. At times he still hated his body; still unsure whether he’d made the right choice; still expected the husky young woman’s voice to come from his throat when he spoke - but that voice was gone, dead. Replaced with something deeper that enabled him to further sink into the wallpaper of society  -

-except when little old ladies tried to pry into his life.

“Why do you look like a girl?” she had asked.

Who the fuck just straight-up ASKS that? he pondered angrily.

He heaved a sigh, his head falling into his hands as the familiar hum, like the static of a forgotten radio left on, buzzed in his mind. Old habits, familiar cravings left him clenching his fists, alone in the night. Thoughts of several more beers, or a razor blade came to light, and he wrestled with his demons as he had time and time again.

Taking several deep breaths, he moved back to his laptop and composed himself. His eyes drifted once more out the window and he watched the fireflies again.

All that was left for him was to achieve the dream: to have the white coat, to care for patients. He hoped that drive was enough to sustain him for many more years; keep him warm, where his previous relationships and friendships had failed to, severed, turning their backs on him once he took the step to having the altered face, voice, and name.

Milo’s gyspy heart beat on, and he resumed writing his paper, ever searching for his peace that was always out of reach.

__________________________________

therapist asked me to explore what I felt like my gender stuff could become, in the future. 7 to 10 years from now.
so I wrote this.
best case scenario I can imagine for myself.

hard truths come to light.

but.
I think I like the name Milo.