There’s a highlighter green screen-print banner on my fridge that says in big bold letters “Gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught”. As for what’s meant by poetry, my personal definition is the beauty that emerges from the friction between meanings. It’s the sparks when you rub two ideas together. I think ourselves and all things are constantly streaming poetry into the universe. We are ever-Becoming. We are a swirling bonfire of meaning, spraying sparks into the void. We are the alchemists of nature, turning the raw stuff of perception into emotions, ideas, poems, and stories.

Gender is this poetry brought home to live in The Body. All bodies are constantly becoming, along fractal scales from particle phase changes through macro-evolution to the life-cycle of the stars that birthed us. To explore and express this fully is in the deepest accordance with Nature. To treat the body as part of Nature, to accept its perpetual becoming, and the poetic friction that sparks between the nature of the body and the dreams of the heart, is deeply human. To tend the flames that arise, caring for your truest heart and the warmth of life that surrounds you, is sacred practice. We all do it, but in our present culture, most people choose to follow the path of well-trod mythologies.

Others though, trans folks like myself, choose to explore the wild, new myths and poems off these worn paths. The tools by which we do this are those of the alchemist: language, art, fashion, ritual, medicine, data, and magic. These let us touch cosmic threads and knit the deepest parts of ourselves into the fabric of community.

It’s heartbreaking and at times panic-inducing to live in a culture where so many people view this as the opposite of the brave expression and survival of a deep humanity, and instead as unnatural, as less-than-human. As abhorrent, as dangerous. As something to be stamped out or hidden in shame.

I am sick of crouching, of tensing, of hiding, of explaining, and of being afraid. I am exhausted with the fear that because I choose to honor the poetry inside me, I deserve violence, hate, and rejection.

When we reduce gender to legalities and diagnoses, we strip it of its essential poetry, and I fear that we strengthen those who hate trans folks. Certainly, it’s critical that we fight for freedom, rights, dignity, and safety, and this means contending in the legal and medical realms. My hope though, is that the heart of our love for trans people is not based in these things, but in our poetry.

We all have it. My hope and blessing for you, whether you identify as trans or not, is that you might embrace your own innate poetry.