Across the bridge, there are a million lights and night rider I'm driving, New York City on my right. Steering wheel in my hand, journal tight to my thigh and that seventy-miles-an-hour highway line's hypnotized. And meditative thoughts materialize where I'm chugging along the interstates, paraded by inquisitive nouns looking cock-eyed and inquisitive towns and wonder what this countrified city boy hides. And this time, it's Raleigh to DC, New York and Philly; a love-seat on Monday; a pull-out couch on Tuesday. And on days this gray, I fold into myself like clovers after dusk; and on days this cold, I wonder what the road holds. I could beat a concept of home and I say the mourner's prayer almost without thinking: sings in Hebrew.
Yes, I do believe in God; and no, this isn't Columbine, I'm not answering with my life on the line but when a student asked me this question, "do you believe in God?," after an hour-long trans 101 lesson, she was looking for a life line. 'Cause her whole lifetime, she believed in water into wine, dying for your sins and walking on liquid; and here I was, taking Adam's rib and turning it into something she had to question. sings in Hebrew
Your Hebrew. The loss of a daughter without gaining a son; and like "wouldn't it just, like, be easier if you just sort of, like, picked one?" For you? Well, probably; but for me, it's all speculatory; for my family, yes. See, yesterday, I cut off the last parts of me recognizable in my mother's silhouette; a pound and a half of flesh, and tomorrow yesterday's trash; and I'm a little bit regret, and a little bit happiness. Witness self-hate. Witness mutation. Witness my father's even breath breaking into hysteria and negotiation. Witness, witness awakening. See, I went to sleep proud and woke up feeling like a sell-out, like I'm fucking the binary, like I'm putting out for a system that would put up with me. Like now, I'm part of this silent hierarchy we've set up for those who have transitioned medically. And really, well, that's not how I feel at all, so I'm calling on this community to commute; to move past passing judgment 'cause it was twenty-six years before I saw anything beautiful in me. Twenty-six years, each with 365 days, and between, nearly ten thousand dawns of dysphoria; of waking under waterfalls, waiting to be washed clean, or carried off. And we are eighty percent water, fluidity seems only natural, to change state — a birthright. Isn't that what we're taught? That energy is neither gain nor loss; from lava to mountain; from fire to rock— sings in Hebrew
Sit out parts in the highway; where exits grow so far apart that what is conceptually just a little ways to go becomes fifty miles of road between you and your goal sings in Hebrew. It is a conversational prayer: the service leader says one thing and the congregation answers Hebrew. It's a dialog for a pair; patchwork on asphalt; tar snakes are making peace. See, across the bridge, there are a million lights and night rider I'm driving, hoping instinct brings me to insight.