Transwomen Have Periods

Remember when everything was heavy?

When candy was sweet and a stare could get you hot?

Remember when music could make you cry

Without a glass of wine to soften your heart?

I woke up hungover without drinking,

Aching, soreness, and strangely giddy feelings,

Sensations in my heart not unlike what’s in my chest,

And stomach pains like little smiles teething.

Transformation entails some rearranging,

Hormones pushing, pulling, and changing.

My moods are growing and almost glowing,

And I’ve never felt more like a woman in the making.

The Creature Who Spoke A Damned Tongue

Deadly trickles of anticipated dread

Are familiar enough to her to seem distant

But presently and always keeping her comfort

Likes years of experience following pivotal decisions.

Dusty and dark as her place of dwelling

Were the unfurnished caverns of her intimacy.

Too long empty is as vulnerable as untouched

With the burden and ferocity of memory.

Language unused atrophies like a muscle,

Remaining unseen negates the power of recognition,

The faces of a friend, family member, or companion

Turn feral as forgotten dogs to such a creature’s intuition.

There, in her lair, were the worlds where she dwelt,

Distinct and unapproachable, like light too bright to see,

Away in a darkness unbroken by trouble or fright

Her life, locked so preciously away, ever outward seeped.

Damn every fragment of those unresting feelings

That scissored her apart from every body where’s peace,

The creature of anxiety speaking tongues of the mad

Sleeping separately and sound in dysfunctional dreams.

I Like To Play Deeply

I fall asleep to voiceless thoughts

And wake up to morbid day-dreams.

Out drips excretions from serrated prose,

The monologs of lifeless playthings.

Like playing dress up in foggy streets

Where every few feet has potential to be anything

And I can be whatever I believe

Until the sun erases my possabilities.

It eats me away with every dull moment,

Goading me back into my imagination.

Creative spirals of disparate mumblings,

The umbilical straps of my safe haven.

Eventually I’ll wake up to freer days

And slumber securely in a psychic Hell

When all my debts have been repaid

And I don’t slip away so well.

Happy New Year, Everyone.

There’s no denying it’s been hard. There are many faces I’ve missed and harsh realities to swallow. Still, it means a lot to share these scraps of prose with everyone who comes along. I hope you’re comfortable and secure tonight, and that we’ll have even more to share in 2021!

If You Go Into The Cold

At 6 P.M, Christmas night,

When there’s no shadow on the frozen ground,

It’s better to stay inside with coffee and cream

Than to risk being seen out of doors in this town.

The weather alone is enough to have caution,

The first things we find are often their winter clothes

Followed, not far away, by whatever else they wore,

And finally, the body, often half buried in snow.

It happens every year, but we couldn’t tell you why,

Only that it’s irrelevant where one’s supposed to be,

It’s 20 below freezing just an hour after dusk

And there are hours more waiting before anything can be seen.

They stagger, it seems, to the woods from the roads,

The thickets leave cuts, which make them easy to find

Following the broken twigs stained with blood

To the places where the victims inevitably lay

An old tree, bent and rotting, where we find them reposed,

Or by the bridge, in the stream, where their skins turn pale blue.

Sometimes they seem to drop somewhere randomly,

And only rarely are there signs a struggle ensued.

What we mean, is you’re welcome to stay if you must,

We’re aloud to be festive, if we don’t leave our homes,

But Winter is the master of the elements tonight

And if you care to see another year, you’ll stay out of the cold.

Radient Ideation

Allow me to indulge my radient ideation,

A spectacle of bittersweet sunbeams breaking through gray skies,

Eeking their way into my ugliest days

Like transcended smiles projected from the purest celestial lights.

They reach me bedecked in wilting blue flowers,

Exposed to the heavens in a gown of silk white,

Seduced into a dream that lasts for an eternity

Between the fragility of a body and the soft sting of twilight.

It’s wearying to be deranged for the sake of beautiful things,

And as they dull, to come to know, that madness still remains.

A song I knew grew up to be a different kind of tune,

It plays the notes that made me up and broke away from me.

Intoning prose for my own health prolongs the point of breaking,

And sharing them from mind to mind is life that’s worth the saving,

To make a scene of who I’ve been to stimulate your feelings

Is all I need to brighten up this dream I can’t stop dreaming.

Burn me with the autumn leaves, with cardamom and honey,

Leave a house to my mother on the shores of a lake that’s crystal clear and foggy.

Find me there in ashes, free from poverty and wealth,

Dead to all the world, but not dead to herself.

When The Old Die

I imagine that every generation experiences death in their own way.

In our old age, when that stop is more than ever certain,

I imagine every generation leaving behind a legacy

And giving scope to life in how they feel their last days.

As Grandpa was dying, I imagined the kind of mind

A man born in the fifties would carry while he survived,

And the sum of all experiences before he met the end,

How they measured up to what he saw and all the things he’d been.

A man who worked machines, watched tv, and prayed

Died hooked to a machine, with the television on, praying.

The same shows he always saw were the last ones he watched,

And the cigarette in his fingers was the last thing he touched.

Will I die surrounded by the things I see today?

Will I understand the world as I do now, the same way?

When my generation finally slips into the grave,

I wonder what the others will think of how we passed away..

A Touch In Bad Weather

Some people can’t be reached no matter what you say,

Who probably wouldn’t care to feel your touch anyway,

And for all those who need, in some way, to be reached,

Our fingers might wave but they rarely ever meet.

In a dark windy heart there’s cracked glass in the rain,

Palms still untouched can be cut all the same.

Quieting the air with a gesture, I find

It helps, when you reach, to shield your hands with mine.

Those stinging cold moments with warmth underneath

Pour lakes into places overridden with dead leaves,

An Autumn-stained blush from a spring-tinted gaze

Briefly turn skies that were black back to grey.

Why It Eats Them

If it exists

It can be eaten.

A body that needs and a mind that percieves

Never ceases to breed new cravings,

From bitter seeds to fields of weeds

And entire populations.

For pleasure and the fear of death

A war for peace against distress

And harvests passed through mouths and chests

To pacify those needings.

Where emptiness meets the scent of flesh,

The freshness of unspoiled aeons,

The yawning consciousness of ever-dark

Yearns endlessly for freedom.

Its shadow veils the infinite stars,

Collapses galaxies and consumes their dust,

And for everything it cannot have

It holds a knawing, grating lust.

The dry and brittle bones of worlds

Stripped of their luscious, inebriating fruit

Fall from looking out with awe

To pits of their self too deep to see through.

A space-less shape beyond these dimensions,

A mind with too much trouble unseen,

The common core of all creation,

A child with candy on Halloween.

I Love October

Dark chocolate, melted,

Mixed with coffee and cream.

Grey skies, cold wind,

And blankets of orange leaves.

Jazzy lo-fi with my morning tea,

Earth & spice in the air I breathe

Death of summer, sweet relief

Apple cider and marshmallow treats

Afternoon walks in long dark sleeves

Reaquaintences with the old silver screen

Gothic novels and scary dreams

A celebration for all macabre things.

October is the month I like to savor;

Its bitterness, sweetness, strength, and mystery.

It reminds me what makes me feel alive,

Being sensitive enough to take pleasure in little things.

It’s like kisses under a thick comforter

And shivers from a well placed touch,

A chill that sweeps over your entire body.

A gentle shock that opens you to your reality.

Dear October, I love you,

Sincerely, Sanya Elswyth Walma

Grandfather

You had a lot to say,

A lot locked behind all the walls of your losses,

Heavy half-truths, unexhumed feelings, and prejudices.

A doomsday prophet, razor-focused on the end.

So absorbed with abstract death, present miseries eluded you,

That was, until they burdened you, and wore you down.

The last eight years of your life were some of the strangest of mine.

We needed each other, but I couldn’t always depend on you.

You were the last person I would trust with anything personal,

And in my lowest moments, I hate to say, your words only hurt.

I couldn’t be your grandson, though I pretended to the end,

Hiding everything about myself as I tended to your needs.

And when you were afraid to die, I stayed beside you,

Comforting you with the same love you had for me,

The unconditional, but seperated from real empathy.

The truth is that we could never accept each other

For who I am and what you believed.

For all the years we spent together, just ourselves,

Every day was a little painful, with all the tension I concealed.

It was all for you, and now you’re finally burned and buried.

It hit me hard, knowing our interactions are done.

Your voice is embedded in my mind, your words and persona.

I miss you, and it’s bitter, even though I’m glad you’re gone.

Goodbye Grandfather, I’ll remember all you taught me.

I’ll remember because I’m unable to forget.

You taught so much and still learned so little.

The end of the world is surely coming, even though you missed it.

Goodbye.