Robin Gow

Affairs in Order 

We are dying. We are dying and I don’t know why
no one is saying that. We are dying like pigeons.
We are dying like freight trains that kept running, wild off the side of the cliff and into the river.
 
I read three posts today that encourage trans people to get our affairs in order before the election.
I look at our house and the drafty windows 
and the leak in the laundry room and the peeling tiles. 
I find my birth certificate. The rewritten one. The one my parents have never seen
and I laugh at it.
Laugh wild. Imagine myself as two babies instead of one.
Which one would I keep for myself?
 
I do not want to get my affairs in order. I want to go into the upstairs room
and kick over all the boxes. I want the mess to feel tangible and real instead of just
a looming devastation promise. 
 
When I say we are dying I do not mean in the mundane way. I also do not mean
this is the ugly end. Never mistake “dead” or “dying” for “gone.”
We have never been gone but my loves, we are dying. Speak it aloud.
Speak it in public. Speak it when no one around you wants to hear it.
 
I want to know who is planning to talk to the dead. I want to learn how
because I do not think anyone has ever taught me. I think we are going
to have to learn together.. I am knocking on doors.
I am asking, “Are you dying?” and feeling so much relief 
when someone says, “Yes. Yes I am.”