a poem about becoming
by divya iyer
05/02/2020 | poetry | 5 minute read
“do teeth count as bones?” he asks me. we’re sitting by the river
and the water glows golden where the sun hits it.
“they should, right, but they’re not covered by skin.
does that make them redundant?” he frowns, thinking.
“what if,” i say, drawing it out for the drama. “what if all bones
with skin on them are regular bones, and naked bones are teeth.”
“so exoskeletons are just teeth,” he says. i nod. in my house
we make the rules, and i’m young enough to feel at home everywhere.
“we’re all teeth in the cosmic mouth of the universe,” i offer,
and he laughs – loud, open and gaping. a laugh that stays with you,
once you’ve heard it.
but now, we are no longer twelve. he’s broken bones, i’ve lost teeth
at the dentists. needed ice-cream after, but couldn’t enjoy it.
“tastes too much like blood,” i’d said. and that was just
the way the universe was, to me. take everything you’ve ever wanted
and never enjoy any of it. i did the best i could, all things considered.
at fifteen we go back to the riverbank with cider and vanilla cake.
all our limbs together, right arm left arm right leg left leg and all of that
all over again – we’re two halves of a perfect human spider. best friends.
i take the bottle of cider from him, put my mouth on it and chug.
my saliva, his saliva. we’re all made of stardust anyway, all spit from
one common source. i exhale through my mouth, hand the bottle back.
“i’m transgender,” i say, and in the empty quiet of the outdoors,
it rings true like something the whole universe needs to hear.
something inside me settles like a wooden floor eaten through by termites.
the falling, inevitable. but he looks at me, his expression sombre.
“okay,” he says, solemn, respectful. “tell me what pronouns you want me to use.”
it can’t be that easy, can it? the birds whistle through the trees.
maybe i am exactly where i need to be. so i tell him, and then i ask him,
“and that’s it? no questions?” like the self-sabotager i am. it does not do
for the floor to be solid, i need to try and break it before i can conclude on stability.
he hands me a piece of cake. “it’s you who’s been carrying this truth, not me,”
he says. “i don’t think bodies are inherently gendered, anyway. i think
it’s how you perceive them.”
i take the cake, and eat it at one go. take my shoes off, my socks off,
dip my feet into the river. “yeah?”
he nods. “that’s the nature of reality,” he tells me. “your truth, you feel it the hardest.
in your life, it’s your tooth, but it’ll always be a bone to me. you know what i mean?
the only person who lives under your skin is you.”
i contemplate that, thoughtful. take another sip of the cider, look upwards at the sky,
transient, like me; in between who i want to be and whatever i am, right now.
“so,” he says. “gender. teeth. bones. it’s all biology, in the sense that it’s only what you call it,
how you want to study it. your bones would be the same regardless of your allosomes.”
“22 sets of chromosomes that would be the same regardless of pair 23,” i say.
he nods. “this isn’t nat geo,” he says. “there’s no wrong way to exist.”
the sky’s getting closer to sunset time now, the light spilling out differently.
i am always in the right place at the right time, i think, with the confidence of a child,
unshaking and innocent. i will not let it go. i will embrace the growth of existing all my life.
