Today I'm sharing a poem by Jane Hirshfield.
Like Two Negative Numbers Multiplied by Rain
Lie down, you are horizontal.
Stand up, you are not.
I wanted my fate to be human.
Like a perfume
that does not choose the direction it travels,
that cannot be straight or crooked, kept out or kept.
Yes, No, Or
—a day, a life, slips through them,
taking off the third skin,
taking off the fourth.
And the logic of shoes becomes at last simple,
an animal question, scuffing.
Old shoes, old roads—
the questions keep being new ones.
Like two negative numbers multiplied by rain
into oranges and olives.
Happy Sunday all.
I wanted my fate to be human. This is the most simply understood way of being a transperson; I wonder if that was the intention of the poem. It seems to me such a lovely explanation - human, directionless like perfume, neither vertical or horizontal, just what one happens to be in the moment.
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