Lucky

In this version of the story, when you tell me
you’re starting hormone therapy because
you are 18 now and can make
your own decisions, I say “Good.
You know what’s best for you.” I do not ask
if you’ve found a therapist in California.
I do not ask if you are rushing into it.

In this version, my support lets you tell me
that your cis female roommate
is afraid testosterone will make you violent,
that she has made you unwelcome
and complained to the school’s housing office.

In this version, I tell you
we will support you,
that you will never have to worry
about where you will sleep.

In this version, I am not afraid
of losing the child I raised
and can see the adult
you are becoming
instead of learning
years later
how scared you were,
how alone.

Today, I count my luck
that you are there, on the other end
of the phone, to receive my apology,
to tell me it was ok even though we both know
it was not.

*

Election aftermath in the office cafeteria

“Can I sit down?” my younger colleague,
mother of two Asian-American girls, asks.
I welcome her, happy for the distraction
in this week where we are supposed to pretend
that everything is normal.

I promise I am trying.
I remind myself to smile and laugh,
but halfway through her sweet potatoes,
she stops and says, “You seem down.”
I am thinking of the CEO’s email
on Election Day, reminding us to
follow Community Guidelines [hyperlink]
and remember the Personal Political Activity Policy [link 2].

So I tell her the truth–
that I am exhausted. That I
have not been sleeping well.

I withhold that, before she arrived,
I was sitting at this table with the ghost
of the person who threw themselves
from the top of the 8th floor library.
And also the ghost of my trans daughter’s
friend who watched the victory laps
and swallowed a bottle of pills.
I withhold that my daughter’s cis friends
are telling her to get a gun for protection.

I can see she knows I withhold.
I can see she carries her own ghosts:
the epithets on the metro, what the coming
quadrennial may hold–and maybe
she wanted to tell me about them.
I wish I was less of a coward.

We finish our meals in silence
and when we stand to clear our trays,
we each lead our own procession
out the door and into our own
separate lonelinesses.

*

Patricia Davis-Muffett holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota. Her chapbook, Alchemy of Yeast and Tears, was published in 2023. Her work has won honors including the Erskine J Poetry Prize, placing in the Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest (selected by Marge Piercy) and nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her work has also appeared or is forthcoming in About Place, Smartish Pace, Calyx, Best New Poets and Best American Poetry. She lives in Rockville, Maryland.