My body is not like that of an animal’s body anymore,
and I can thank science                             or death
                                            for that.
               First there was the body I was born into,
               and edits were made.
               First the world was made and then
               edits were made, and then edits
               were made, and then edits were
               made in a way that killed
               the world.
First there was an edit to my body,
               and now each week I perform the same edits

                                            again and again.

I remember the shapes my older bodies
               used to make like one remembers
               a particularly bad case of food poisoning.

I’ve had the misfortune to have to pay
               for a body that continues to move
               despite it’s discomforts and still
I know it binds me to the bodies I will never                   have.

Look at the genders I wish to wear
               and tell me I can wear them anyway.

What am I doing with my transition if not clout chasing?

Look at the way my body moves and tell me
               it moves like the bodies it fixates on:
                                             I will know you to be a liar.

One foot in front of the other until I crumble
               into a pile of salt.
At the end of capital will I know how to behave?
Even now at the end of one of my many gendered faces
               I still yearn for it’s previous comforts.
If the body is a prison, does the abolition
               mean the dissolution of all bodies,                      of all prisons.
Can I rehabilitate my body into a useful home,
               into a vessel that can do more than keep myself in?

               SOPHIE says that the body is not the end of a story,
               that it is not a prison and I want to believe that to be true.

The many genders I’ve worn are not the continued end of my story,
               but what is the difference in the prison of a building
               and the prison of capital?
                              The prisons we make of our bodies?

An exchange of the currency my body is called
               does not make my body any less restrictive.

                              In for a penny in for a pound.
What does abolition look like at the end
               of one of my genders?
How can I conceptualize the dissolution of the state
               when I struggle to pay my rent?

               Can I really let go of the hell I know then?
Can we ever really look away from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah;
                              and why should we not see what hell
we have wrought on my many gendered faces?

I will not be salty if the next generation
               gets to live without the idea of a prison
               because that is what I wish to live for                but cannot.

I am not like the animals in my poems                               (I am a worse animal),
               I want the dissolution of capital and incarceration,
               but I cannot trust my body
to not act at keeping them alive in some small way.

                              In for a penny, out for a pound.
               We bought our destruction by allowing anything
                              to hold more or less merit.
               The body is not a part of my story but is a verb in relation to it.

When I say I cannot live in the world I want to create,
               I mean I do not                              need                   to.

               What does abolition look like at the end of the world?
               And who can ever be so certain
                              but those

that will get to live                     in it?