When I was a man 
I didn't know how it would be 
to live as a woman, 
the mind inside her body 
a foreign country, different skin 
and mounds as round as hills 
and milk, how it felt to give birth 
from the womb of a woman, 
to be filled with the flesh of a man 
and how she comes, elusive as bones 
inside her thrilling skin.
I didn't remember my previous names 
when I was born as a woman 
or how, as a man, I called to her 
and held the gentle hands 
that pulled me into her arms.
How many times have I left her 
to want her again?


from ‘House of the Unexpected’ (Wild Ocean Press)