Field Dressing My Body for Easier Transportation
The doctor that prescribed
my hormones did not bother
to tell me how to administer
the injections into my body,
so I can’t expect my future surgeon
to let me know how to dress myself
in preparation for consumption.
When I slide my slender needle in
it is easier to guide it through my thigh
when I wear skirts or dresses,
so I will wear a dress
for this occasion as well.
I will wear a dress and a man
will slide his knife through me
to create a cavity;
a cavity that will make me feel fuller
with its emptiness;
a cavity that will fill me
with want for what I now lack.
In autumn a man I do not know
has been gored by a deer
he has attempted to kill.
The goal was to field dress
the deer with his nephew.
If a deer is a buck is it a man?
If so three men I don’t know
touch death on an October night:
the deer gets shot,
the hunter is gored,
and the nephew tends to the uncle –
who passes away before paramedics arrive.
The buck isn’t found in the end,
but I imagine it will return
to wherever community finds it,
or to wherever it can be consumed by land or man.
This is how I will prepare for surgery
and prepare for departure from myself.
Suspect it will be the morning of the surgical date –
summer dew on my skin;
a blade in my hand sharp enough
to split the skin but not tear through me.
The guides I’ve read suggest not breaking past the sternum
if I choose to be mounted in the future:
I will purchase gloves to reach up
and slice my esophagus,
pull it out through the cavity I’ll create –
to prepare for a future in which
I can be mounted if I choose it.
There can be merit in retaining the offal of wildlife
for later consumption should I choose to,
so I will retain the wild bits of myself.
It is my wish that my surgeon will retain the parts of me
that he will remove too,
and I will bury them in a cyclical fashion:
I intend to take my removed testicles to a field in autumn,
the night turning everything into amber,
and obliterating them with a bullet or a few.
Just me, a cavity, and my surgically made cavity.
No one will teach me how to field dress my body for surgery,
so I will teach myself how to dress,
as I’ve taught myself so much –
as I have taught myself how to have a body,
and how to transport it into something that I will love.
Aeon Ginsberg (they/them) is an agender transfeminine writer and performer from Baltimore City, MD. They are the winner of the 2019 Noemi Press Poetry Prize for their book, ‘Greyhound’ (2020). Aeon is a member of the Peach Mag editorial team, a taurus, bartender, and a bitch.