The Little Marriage

The life of a conscious thing consists entirely of consciousness. What, then, is the life of an unconscious thing? It’s life, if we insist, but rather in that stiff and formal way that a pen is a tool or Hamlet a politician. A tree is alive, if you’d like it to be. We have a coherent means of talking about it that way. But we’re wrong to talk about it that way without believing, at least a little bit, the opposite; that we live alone in a world that moves and grows but doesn’t live (not with us, anyway). Nothing is as alive as a person. Nothing can die quite as profoundly as a person. But I’m not talking about death right now.

Machines hum glidepaths in the summer sky above my little apartment building in the middle of our city. Viola is waiting for me in the bathtub.

Already, for a little while previous, I’d been calling her Viola in my head. Now that the paperwork was finally through, we’d eaten our egg lunch, watching: the glass of the frame shone almost like her proud eyes. It was all so beautiful. The name I’ve always wanted, for the woman I’ve wanted more than all that time since. The officiated phrase, taking my name has never had such significance to me, truly! And the frame beside it, with its signatures—not the prime minister’s, not governor general’s, of course—but ours … much better. Pink pen.

I might not have made her do it, of course not, were it not illegal to be transsexual. Yes, I will confess it in court. Simple pleasure, simply, has become the rarity for us people. I only thought that if this country denies me my pleasure, I will make my own from pain, like drugs. Old white men simply don’t know how to own others. I know the ingredients.

There are waves in the bathtub, from my new Viola’s shaking, when I enter with the shiniest of all things in-hand. She is scared, smiling. Magical girl; she did not need to pour out the water. I love her so deeply, and she loves me. I don’t want to force her to soak in the blood. And with her movements, and with the slipping water, I can still make out the marker on her abdomen, from the morning: the arrow, the pink PROPERTY OF (my legal name doesn’t matter, now. At least, not to me.)

When her cunt—when my cunt finally comes and off into my arms, her hymen onto my wet finger, she’ll be happy, she said. She’ll be never forced to carry. And, it is true. When I’m finished, she dances nice on the tile. She dances, she says: “I feel human!”

And so, I sing her song:

I’m happy I am not a cis man / Transness has done wonders / for my technique / One learns to find creative ways of imposing one’s will / on the human body / One learns how to take nature under one’s thumb / make it do one’s bidding / Your body is made of the fact that I’m touching it / You see, your kiss makes things what they want to be / Even my want for you is a need / You stir the pulsing whole of / my whole sex

That pussy did what she was told and it felt so nice / to be listened to / She’s safer in my arms than sweetness in the body of an apple / More welcome in my arms than God / in the heart of a saint / You’re even nearer to me than God to Himself / Wrapped up tight in my arms but free / as a bird in her sky / Warm and happy like the beautiful secret you are / You fill my arms like a new idea / of divinity taking root in the soul / I don’t believe in God / I know that God made you / I’ll make him bow down to my love / for you

To say you’re an extension of me / would be to say Paris is an extension of the ground / “Flirting” is just what linguists call your dialect / of French / and there’s more passion for you in one corner of my mouth than there’s flames in a church fire / I’ll blaze like that God’s eye in the heavens, that engine of summer / You teach my light to eclipse the sun / and every flicker of your eyelashes is an entirely successful prayer / Everything you pray to becomes a goddess / and I wanna write about / how much more likely everyone’s prayers are to come true when you’re next to them / on the pew

The other day I started a poem about the apocalypse, and somehow even that’s mostly a love poem for you / “All destruction brought on by the existence of humanity will have been worth it when you kiss my neck.”

Like a tornado taking me from life to an Oz of pink / I need to kiss you like I’m planting rows / of sweet pink crop in the earth of your upturned mouth / I am the ‘yes’ that nature wants so deeply / to say to you / Flowers are attempts of grass to describe you, and you taught the honeybees all they know / Sugar is your music like / Beethoven places his hand on a piano / you place your mouth on mine / Uncut heroin would barely be stronger than aspirin next to you / I tremble in poems but / if I’d been a mathematician, I’d have found way to shape the spark of you / in abstractions

All of the beauty in the universe calls you her sister, see / Our love holds down the sky, then, your eyes teach me to climb the sun / The sky shakes and twitches / and it comes alive / Your eyes are my lockjaw / There’s more dancing in a single glance than there ever has been / at a prom, though / Now, I associate the memoir form with you / The night is God’s song of longing for you / But any song will inevitably be so if I sing it / long enough