Writing From Life

I’m waiting for my flight home in the Regina Airport. It’s 5 p.m. here but it’s 7 p.m. in Toronto. My laptop is open but I’m not writing. I’ve just spent the last 24 hours doing readings and workshop in a prairie city. I didn’t realize how cold it would be in Regina so I’ve spent my time shivering, darting between pockets of warmth and frigid air. I’m exhausted from lack of sleep. My body aches.I take more extra strength Tylenol. It’s almost three months since my gender confirmation surgery, but it still hurts when I sit or walk for long periods of time. Travelling while recovering is harder than I tell anyone. I bleed more freely when I travel, my body reacting to the changes in airplane pressure and the hours of sitting. I landed in Regina with two hours of sleep and I’m leaving with six hours. I’m running a constant deficit that will eventually catch up to me. I feel pulverized, converted into pulp and pressed into a human shape.When I became a published poet, I didn’t understand what I was signing up for. People often think I would be excited about travelling across Canada to different poetry gigs, but it’s the hardest part of the job for me. Readings are draining, a short rush of nerves and adrenaline followed by a sudden need to escape. Public appearances got harder after I transitioned. I have to worry so much about my appearance, how much makeup I’m wearing and how feminine I look. Airports are dangerous. Security often targets me. People stare.Writing and performing while trans is complicated. I read poems from my third book now, but they’re all about my abusive ex partner. After two years, I’ve left him but he’s still written into the fabric of my life. People get upset about the swear words and the sexually explicit lines. I’m not sure how to be the trans girl that audiences want so I read whatever I want. Some of the poems still hurt to say aloud but I know that time and repetition will wear them down into nothing. There’s a special kind of vulnerability that comes from being on stage as a trans girl, speaking about love and loss while everyone evaluates how feminine you are.

I wonder what I am now: a poet or just a body filled with words and regrets?

I keep thinking about that vulnerability while I wait in the Regina airport. People don’t know how scared I am in public spaces, unsure of how I look and how people will react. Every time I have to go into a bathroom, I’m afraid. Whenever I have to interact with someone, I’m terrified by what they might say or do. To mediate my anxiety, I slip between my emails, twitter, texts, and Instagram in a loop. I’m providing advice about Indigenous cultural protocols via email to my publisher. I’m stepping into a Twitter war about Margaret Atwood, clapping back with GIFs. I’m texting one of my partners. I realize my ex has blocked me on Instagram. I’m trying to write an article.Being an Indigenous trans girl poet is living and writing inside a genocide. I’m pulled in a thousand directions, constantly in danger. There is a shape of tired that soaks into my bones and dissolves me into mud. I’m damp earth, dragging myself back to my apartment to collapse into my bed. My poetry emerges in sudden revelations, moments stolen from the rest of my work. Educating, advocating, and fighting back are my default settings now. I have 40 unanswered emails in my inbox. I’m overdue on five assignments, two poems, and I need to get back to someone about a gig. Most of the work I’m doing isn’t about poetry or my art. It’s about CanLit or representation. It’s work I’m trying to do because I hope it makes space for other Indigenous trans writers. It’s important, but it’s not poetry.Most of my poems are single drafts. I write them and then rush them into print. I don’t have time to edit like I used to. I don’t even want to write poems anymore. Poetry is just something that happens to me, a bad habit that I can’t quit. I want to say that I fell out of love with poetry because it’s dramatic, but I never stopped loving it. We just grew apart because of life. I miss the early days when we saw potential in each other. Now we just count the losses in stanzas and tweet about trans girl representation, the murder of Indigenous kids, and use Drag Race GIFs to troll CanLit celebrities.

I want to disappear but by pure instinct alone, I keep writing. I wonder if they teach emerging writers about this kind of living in MFA classes.

When they announce that my plane is boarding, I’ve managed to send ten emails, five texts, and a string of tweets. I sit on the plane and try to write one of many overdue pieces. I end up crying in my seat, watching the night sky trace past me. The plane wing tips seem to split the horizon into two streams of past and future. I feel caught in between lives. My vagina hurts again. I take more Tylenol. I read Ocean Vuong’s newest poem. My friend, Carrianne Leung, has published a new book, That Time I Loved You, and I try to finish it before we land.I cry again as we start our descent into Toronto. I miss the sound of his voice. I want to text him about Regina and what it feels like to be a poet. I’ve never learned how to move on when something you love is missing. I check Twitter. I jump into more fights, email my publisher, and message some of my literary friends about a recent controversy. I remind folks about sending me their blurbs for my next book. I write a snippet of a poem on my phone while I wait for my checked bag.I wonder if male poets do this much extra work. I wonder if white cis poets fear for their safety in airports. I wonder what my poetry would be like if I wasn’t healing from surgery and had someone love me in a safe way. I want to go away to Banff and write in the mountains. The last time I was there, I wrote a book about my relationship with my ex partner and he yelled at me for 30 minutes when he read it. I wonder what I am now: a poet or just a body filled with words and regrets?I take a taxi home. I finish the poem on my phone and email it in to a magazine. I tweet about the night skyline while the radio plays Frank Ocean. Once I’m home, I take a bath to manage the pain of my healing body. I fall asleep in a pile of quilts, my luggage strewn across the floor. I’ve written four books and been published in almost every national literary magazine and media outlet. My work is taught in university classes. I’m a 30-year-old transsexual woman.I don’t want to write poetry. I want to disappear but by pure instinct alone, I keep writing. I wonder if they teach emerging writers about this kind of living in MFA classes. Am I the poet that audiences imagine? Is this what being a successful poet feels like? Why do so many people want this life? Is there a better version of it that I don’t know because I’m Indigenous and trans? Sometimes I feel happy when I’m writing and it pulls me back like,

a drug,a bad relationship,the last drag of cigarette,a plane ride home in the dark

everything that repeats

without getting better.