Sestina
After DSM-5 Criteria for Gender Dysphoria

It all starts with desire.
A burgeoning conviction.
Taking what is typical
and splitting it in two,
lapping up what drips between
the experienced and the marked.

At birth we come out marked.
Screaming with a desire
to connect, we emerge between
the cause and the conviction.
Each breath informs the two
and teaches that it’s typical.

If only the typical
could be marked
by the one, the two,
the three edges of desire.
Then our conviction
could come from the trial in between.

What then could be found between
the banished and the typical?
The boldest conviction
drops weight on a heavily marked
difference. As to desire?
An edge always splits in two.

An edge always splits in two.
Between the mother and the father, between
the near and distant calls of desire,
we read topical news to feed typical
ends, speed salient marked
by smooth, solid lines of conviction.

I know who I am. Conviction
that an edge doesn’t split in two.
I was slapped on the ass and marked
from birth. I came out between
walls that held within them a typical
hospital bed. To want is not the same as to desire.

We’re marked by the conviction of what we create
with desire. The only two I’ll be is you and me.
Between those walls and edges, we’re anything but typical.

After Top Surgery

cut my tits off in a cupboard drawer
your favorite joke slams shut

am I going to kill my daughter?
five years, instead, of building for her

comfort in the cupping, soft as wet cotton
been cradling someone else this whole time

hourglass of blood, tender in the emptying
refill, refill, refill for the emptying

friends hammer slant wood
in place to prop me up

fragrant morning rays lick
the TV, curtains’ sheen

I warm and am held
we take away to build again

Lauren Smith is a writer and poet based in Oakland, California. Born in Hamilton, Ontario, they moved to California at a young age and have lived most of their life in the Bay Area. They’re currently pursuing their MFA at University of San Francisco. They enjoy writing about queerness, transness, and other forms of questioning and creation. Their poems can be found in Bicoastal Review, Lavender Review, Genau Press, and elsewhere.