2025

January / I watched the train come in like an animal on the first of the year, to Chicago. My leg layered in self-inflicted lines. Anemic in a dirty room, hole in the window. Stale, sour smell. Moldy prosphora. Fear of sex & masturbation. Blood drawing, iron pills. Cold, could never get warm. Cold at the bus stop, into pain, the layers of women's clothing never enough. Ice cream with rainbow sprinkles for dinner, absence form as a placemat, the firstgraders saw straight through into my shame. God Save the Animals on the bus. "And night, night comes to Texas." Snowchance, snowhope; life snowless between the sobs. Longing, ensconced, entowered princess & playful knight in faraway snow. Then the snowday (with no real snow). Waking into not breathing at night, panic on the phone. Bad dreams in the dirty room. Lack of writing.

February / Lack of writing continued. Nightly suffocation continued. God Save the Animals on the bus continued. Almost hospital, almost. In fear at all hours. Hyperventilation. Waking up before the alarm every morning without meaning to. Waking up in alarm before the alarm & talking to Mary on the phone, the multiple alarms. Sick in bed, sick in bed to hide from firstgrade. I rode the train again, antisuicidal lightness. "Lightning strikes, maybe once, maybe twice / Oh & it lights up the night." From bed, from the phone I whispered that I want to be a boy. She said, I hope this doesn't sound condescending, but it's cute how you think things won't get better for you. Your parents are terrible & you'll move out soon & you want to be a boy & you can be a boy one day & I didn't believe her until now. The next day I became Michael. Me & Michael. Respite as I put things into bags, I cut my hair, I (we) watched her favorite movie & I sobbed.

March / I got hit by the March Car to Ain't It Easy by Alex G. I thought I would die in the school crosswalk. Tire approaching skull, head cradled, just knowing. With one simple motion of metal into body, I understood that baptism wasn't necessary. I would've been fine. Belief in a more forgiving God that became less comforting. Alive, I could not be buried in a dress in Texas. Bruise covered with car markings for a week in bed, I dreamt of being dead. My (Spring Break) Car Crash Victim. Back to church after absence, late— the first hour or the eleventh hour— the weather. Blessed bread. Emergency drill in the empty field again, like the first day. Everything made me flinch, for a long time. (It still does, just not as badly.) Dryheaving walking to firstgrade every morning. The two hour fifty five minute ride home. "Toby Grace, world record winner".

April May / Unstable. Firstgraders asking if I was a boy or a girl, looped. Asphalt & metal, the position of bus stop shadows. Good Friday. Easter. Paranoia. Bugs. Amoebangels. Being watched. Things in vents & corners. Being poisoned. Wisdom teeth. Not enough money. Stressors. Turned 23. The end of firstgrade & I can't remember it.

June / The beginning & end of preschool. Testosterone. Walking into the wireheart of the city every day. The uglyheart, across four lanes of highway. My telephone wires transformed into a bad, bad nest. The train, the bakery, the aquarium, the petting zoo. A saccharine parade. Being a kind body. Across parking lots, there & back. Carrying an umbrella for no reason. Concrete heat & then suddenly, school is over.

July / Unmoving depression. For hours at night, walking in circles. Being at strange hours. The science of teaching reading. I almost killed myself.

August / They cast lots over me & then I flew away. Our room. Bruises from moving things up a flight of stairs. Going to the library for AC. Powerlines like new trees. Animal Crossing for Gamecube, the camo performance. Being conjoined to Mary through joint-mail. Tennis. Living Around in her / my skeleton shirt. To grandpa's house & back, again & again; plumes of dust into the air, like the liturgy smoke carrying the souls heaven. Grandpa made sea lion sounds & died. Dark & closed apartment, days of feeling insomnia. Wet rags like Andrei Rublev. The Trees to Sea Scenic Byway. Espresso chip & apple crisp ice cream, then Barview Jetty with a beach of his ashes but no urn.

September / The languor campaign across Oregon. My parrot shoes became sandy then muddy; the boxfan vestigial. Candy colored tiles & giftshop postcards; Seaside shrank since my childhood. Thanks, man (the skeleton shirt without a binder). One of my favorite days: Crawling through Cape Lookout eight hundred feet above teal, then across Barview Jetty (It doesn't have to be one thing, right?). Gifted fire then stars. The mist voices in the Trappist Abbey read the rich man & Lazarus to us, like Father A—n exactly a year earlier. Wanting to brush our teeth together again. Walking to the grocery store by myself. Become One Anything One Time.

October / Atrophy. The saddest cow in the world. Animal Crossing neglect. Learning that sharing a bed with a sick girl makes you act sick. Waking up cold for the first time. Learning that by the time you want a job it's too late. The Red Cross Snoopy Shirt became selling our plasma for money. Learning how to take a walk in the city. Writing for the first time again. A vow in crayon. Fare evasion. The sky became dark & didn't become bright again; God put a lid on it all. All I could talk about was the autumn leaves. The biggest rainbow. Name change.

November / Dreams about snow. The awful first day then the desperate barricade. Sick middle of the month, one by one then all together, eye swollen like Christ Pantocrator. The seagulls flew inland. God is real, see? Snow world.

December / If-Then. The far ends of agoraphobia. Parking lot throw up. Every day for you is exposure therapy. Hundreds of geese. The rainbow then the rainbow tubes & children singing Christmas songs in a windowless room. RESIGNATION & the relief of doing the more difficult thing. Dairy Queen. Muppet Christmas Carol on the couch. A field of colorful lights & then palm trees & suburbs of corridors. California the big, beautiful parking lot. The Nutcracker. An island of Christmas lights & rich people behind glass. Advertisements for advertisements & shopping malls & Christmas shopping. Field notes in the form of a list of food. Home for sea lions like my dog, like the maw of Laura Palmer, like me & Mary sharing a bed. Sudden fog & rows of hawks. A single firework for the road. Goodbye 2025.