My Nest Was Built With Little Bones, by Jennifer Angelina Petro

My Nest Was Built With Little Bones

By

Jennifer Angelina Petro

 

 

 

My nest was built with little bones,

Shells, feathers, twigs, candy wrappers,

Shiny things, torn pages of catechisms, shabads,

And pornographic magazines,

It was made of moss and hair, abandoned ribbons,

Scraps of red bandannas, silken scarves,

Shopping lists, and spit.

 

 

For years I incubated beneath the hollow-boned lark,

Or was it a mockingbird?

My shell survived storms

And long stretches where only monsters,

Drunken owls, and sleepy seagulls smothered me

In the night.  I learned to hide myself—

A nest within a nest—an egg within an egg;

I lived tucking parts of me away

I never wanted.  Brooding memories

Filled the nest like bits of worms regurgitated,

And every now and again I caught a glimpse of a faraway blue sky.

 

 

When the egg hatched and the nest

Bloomed, I stared blindly into myself,

Wiggling stubs of wings I so wanted covered with feathers and flight.

Yet now, I live, I walk, a nest on legs, a human egg, a permanent fledgling—

Wings clipped, song raspy with rain and darkness,

And a road of eggshells spreading out before me wherever I go.

 










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Thank You, I Want You No More, by Jennifer Angelina

Trigger Warning:  This poem is about deep gender dysphoria.  It contains references to tucking, self abuse, self-mutilation, sexual abuse, rape, and gender reassignment surgery.   It is about my continued effort to sort things out, and to heal.

 

 

 

Thank You, I Want You No More

By

Jennifer Angelina Petro

 

 

me

 

 

Even before the abuse started

I would push you in everyday as far as you could go

And pull the extra skin over you,

Making you disappear;

I would tuck you tightly between my thighs

And hold you there hoping to make it look

Like I had a vagina.

Of course, after they gave me pornography

(Trying to make me a man),

And the other abuses—the assaults, the molestations, the rapes,

I hated you even more.

I abused you and got myself into situations

Where others would abuse you too,

And when I grew pubic hair I would tuck you away

Even more—hoping to make you gone,

I fantasized of removing you myself with a knife.

Yes, years later I got married.  Yes, I sired three children,

Yes I learned, to the best of my ability,

To allow you to feel pleasure—but the line connecting you

With my heart and mind would always trigger

A leaving—a drifting upwards into the ceiling

Or else far back into time, or even deep into utter nothingness.

I know, I know, I hear people say to be grateful for what god gave me,

But I look at you like a deformity—something I was born with—

Like blindness or being unable to walk—something that wasn’t supposed to happen.

Maybe it is possible to give thanks

For one’s handicaps, but I have not yet evolved to that place.

No, I do not hate my sons, or men, or masculinity—

I simply want you gone.

And now, the little blue pills

Are causing you to retreat more and more,

And planning for your surgery is utmost in my mind.

I do not hate the idea of you–it’s just

You were never supposed to be there in the first place.

OK. Thank you.

There, I said it.

Thank you for siring my children, thank you for all the times

You let me pass urine, thank you for all you endured all these years,

And yes, thank you for letting them one day transform you

Into the parts I really want.  Thank you, I want you

No more.

 

 

 

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