transition goals
i will question every label i use and call it productive
i will slap an intrusive thought on my todo list and
i will walk through the botanical garden with you and
like the humble venus fly trap i am small and inflamed
and have only managed to grow in an obscure red state.
i will fester in the ground and grieve a fictional character like a human
i will devour vermin and seconds, hours, streams of consciousness wasted
one crack in the foundation & everything seeps out. i will stare
at the perfectly maintained pond, the rhythmic birdsong like a recording.
i am a girl in a curated painting of youth. i am not a girl nor a youth, or at least
i can tell that she/her feels infantilizing, even if adults use it. my brain
doesn’t care what people do, only what oceans do, what forests do, what
suburban monoculture lawns do when you set them on fire with a grin.
i will look solid and strong and fallen and ruined. i will use a productivity app
for everything other than its intended purpose. i will be trans
only when people stop associating that with a binary. i will stare into a crowd
of women and wonder why i don’t feel like one of them, if i’m really just overanalyzing,
if my imposter syndrome has in fact made me gay, if i am crazy or the world is
or both can be true. i will change my pronouns and fling myself
into another masquerade. i will sing along to hyperpop in the airport.
i will read Stone Butch Blues and find everybody relatable. i will feel like
a boy in a glittering, cropped blouse. i will be neither pink
nor blue, but iridescent like the sea.
mk zariel {it/they} is a butch nonbinary neuroqueer theater artist, Best Of The Net and Monarch Award nominated poet, movement journalist & staff reviewer at the Anarchist Review of Books, and BashBack aligned anarchist. it is masculine like a Feinberg protagonist and feminine like a Genet protagonist. the author of VOIDGAZING (2026, Whittle Micropress), DIFFERENT WITH HIM (2026, Rockwood Press), and BOY APPARITION (2025, Vinegar Press), it can be found online at https://mkzariel.carrd.co/, creating conflictually queer-anarchic spaces, writing columns for Asymptote and the Anarchist Review of Books, and being mildly feral in the great lakes region. it is kinda gay ngl.
