Rose Jenny

For When You Find Me

When they kill me in the coming years,
please bury my head in the backyard
of that house in Wood Hollow, to rest
in the shadow of the tire swing, to sink
into the fire pit pressed upon the forest.
 
I want to watch that everchanging earth.
Even as it dries in the coming drought
and floods in the lingering hurricane,
I know this home will protect my face
with a meaty, metamorphic shell.
 
Drop the remains of my detransitioned
torso in the open fields of Mint Hill
to collect rainwater, horses trampling
my flesh into mud paddies, dogwood
pluming from the center of my chest.
 
I want farmhands to set off fireworks
so celestial and violent that the pale
remnants of my belly reflect every blast,
light rippling in puddles of piss and fat,
my navel catching the fallen ashes.
 
And leave my hands for my parents
to carry out of America, to hold
when the bitter, inevitable winter
of another country’s dream
claims their bodies as well.
 
I want my fingers to break
as my mother grasps my hands
too tight, for them to disappear
in the freshly fallen snow, prints
so small they leave no impression.