Legacy

 

Wind whistles and your bones follow

Hanged, dried, chiming 

Exsanguinated, and cleaned of marrow

Ribs, spine, femurs and sacrum all hung out to dry

Bake, sun, heat

And cure in evening warmth of darkened sky

Meat long stripped off, stored, dried, and eaten

Absent, nourishing, remembered

Hunger sated, mind at rest, despair near beaten

I recall clearly our hunt, o joyous and playful

Seeking, catching, subduing

Its conclusion not your end, you gave of fur and offal

On your salted roast thighs I supped that evening

Tender, gamey, succulent

Survival gave way to pleasure, sucking and savoring

Delicately was cleaned, tanned, and sewn your pelt

Umber, burnt, white

Underneath in lonely nights the soul’s warmth is felt

Cured flesh is with me ‘ere I must go forth

Round, belly, backstrap

Safety given as I stalk and sweat in mid-June warmth

Bones, scraps, skin and gristle to the stock pot go

Boiled, snapped, released

And frozen for winter, a part to play with sage and clove

The day will come when your sacrifice reaches its end

And nothing yet remains

Flesh consumed

Pelts worn to threadbare

I shall give thanks then as I did at the first

But always your crown will remain

Hung whistling in the wind

Beckoning me to rest

 

 

{A poem by Leona Maria, with editing feedback from eri lucia kapling} 

Small Journey

Scurry, scurry, scurry, scurry

Movements quick and forelimbs blurry

Whiskers twitch and wide eyes worry

‘Cross the floor you flit and flurry

Looking, looking, looking, looking

Small head swivels thoughts are cooking

Kittens hunting rats are rooking

Out in branches crows onlooking

Reeling, reeling, reeling, reeling

Dust is falling from the ceiling 

Dodging threats resolve is sealing

Overwhelmed implacide feeling

Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry

Through the fringe and foes most furry

Out the door emotions stirring

Forest’s edge to favor curry

Waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting

Moment’s rest your hunger sating

Her approach your heart elating

Tall and slender legs are gaiting

Listen, listen, listen, listen

Late sun rises in the distance

Branches sing and dewed grass glistens

Gently does she bless your mission

“Lover, lover, lover, lover

Leaves lay fallen spores shall hover

Life maintained in mossy cover

Seek the touch of one another”

“Hearing, hearing, hearing, hearing

Such a po’m from graceful deer-ling

Melts away what I was fearing

Trekking out to seek this clearing”

You dare to look up

Do you see it?

She is smiling

 

 

{A poem by Leona Maria, for Sky} 

Morning

I wake up exactly as early as I need to and push myself out of bed, after three or four snoozes, to go do a poor job of shaving before work. I can’t just not shave, that would be insane, but God, I just can’t muster the motivation to do it right today. Today will be a “subverting gender norms” day, I guess. The electric razor does a good enough job but leaves shadow where it always does. I curse myself for not waking up earlier to do it right but I know I’ll just keep doing this. My cat paws at the bathroom door because he dashed in ahead of me before I closed it, because he missed me while I was asleep. He gets a few scratches and I open the door. I’m glad he loves me still, despite my numerous failings as his mother and as a person. At least he stays fed.

I wanted to wear a dress into the office today but no shave means no girl clothes. I pull on some jeans and a t-shirt and don’t bother with my bra inserts. Three years of shots and putting pills in my ass and barely anything to show for it even through a nice fitted top. They get played with and appreciated plenty but I don’t want to have cute little tits, I want to have boobs. I manage a wry smile as I, at 29, have the same experience I’d have probably had at 13 if my chromosomes had been configured correctly. I remember my augmentation surgery coming up and delay killing myself.

    I’ve got fifteen minutes before I have to leave so I get to have some iced coffee from a carton while I sit and marinate some more about how I should have woken up earlier. Fifteen minutes is plenty of time to shave better but I opt not to, for some ungodly reason. I’ve not had the executive function required to find a psychiatrist to get on ADHD meds to fix my executive dysfunction so I sip from my shoplifted deer-themed Target mug and brood. I pet the cat absent-mindedly when he hops up onto my desk. His older brother died recently. He took it in stride.

    It’s a boots day since my sneakers are falling apart and I’ve not bothered to replace them since they were hand-me-downs from a girl I still love who won’t even speak to me enough to tell me to stop asking if she wants to reconnect. It would be easier to be bitter but I can’t manage it. I think about her body, a body I’d kill for, and how it used to feel under my hands and pressed against mine. It’s still not fair, even if it’s my fault we don’t talk anymore. I miss most how my arms wrapped perfectly around her waist when we hugged.

    This is a solved feeling. I did my therapy work about it months ago. It’s similarly unfair how the feeling comes back sometimes anyway. Another of my favorite pairs of boots came from her too. I linger on it but they’re impractical for everyday use. Maybe next time I go out. It’s strange honoring the memory of a woman who’s still very much alive but I guess that’s where I’m at. The fact that I’m still alive, largely thanks to her, is probably testament enough, but I think I’ll wear the boots later.

    It’s nice enough out that I don’t feel like taking the bus to the train station. It’s not a bad walk. It’s about 85% of the walk I took to her old place, the apartment she lived in when she followed me to Chicago a few months after we met. She lives elsewhere in the city now but I still think of that neighborhood as fondly as I do the one surrounding my first place here. Maybe more so, considering all the time I spent there. I look at all the houses we used to pass on our way to the store. There’s a cat at one of them we named, a big fat orange boy. I haven’t seen him in a long time.

    The station’s as crowded as is normal at 7:20 a.m. on a Wednesday. I’ll probably have to stand. It’s whatever. I scroll idly and see nothing interesting. Nothing new, rather. The state is still trying to kill me, but that’s been the case for months. Years, even. Whatever, I knew what I signed up for. It feels all of a sudden like everyone at the station is staring at me, or glancing reproachfully in my direction. It’s not exactly hard to tell that I’m a faggot. Perhaps they’re fantasizing as much as I am about me leaping over the railing and snapping my neck on the street below. I miss when my ideation was more passive. It’s a good thing my cowardice has kept me alive this long.

    Whatever, it’s brave to keep living. I know the fucking platitude, but I know too that the only thing that kept me alive last year is my fear of doing a botched job of ending it all. I want to leave a non-mangled corpse so that my family has something to mourn. I don’t know how to tie a noose and I know that if I look it up some large language model is going to tell me everything’s okay and I’m not alone, and I’ll have to scroll down to find what I’m actually looking for. Overdosing looks profoundly unpleasant and slitting my wrists to bleed out would take too long. I don’t own a gun and that would be too messy anyway. Stop telling me my life is brave when it’s fear that maintains it.

    It’s her birthday today.



{A short story by Leona Maria}