Trans Exiteration

More than once, I've written my way through a narrow, thorny place.

I've narrated a life shift on the printed page. I continue to do so. When I write, I'm narrating the exit. Exit narration. Exiteration.

I hear an -iteration with an ex- on it; a repetition I want to break up with.

I feel exasperation with the exit. I'm not very good at quitting and moving forward. I'm a hanger-on to the past.

The word exiteration does not seem to have been taken yet except in this repetitively thumpy dance music. Coincidentally, this is indeed how The Exit has felt to me. I ruminate in ways I'd call obsessive, brutalist, tiresome. The inside of my skull sounds like this.

Run. Every big step forward is an exit from something else. If you hatch, you exit the shell.

Previously, for Gender Identity Today, I wrote of the volta, the point in the poem where the poet reveals uncertainty, mutability, the containing of multitudes. The volta recites itself in more than one way. It memorized its own line, but when it comes time to perform on stage, it turns on itself. It isn't what it is, and it is what it isn't.

It's a trans exiteration if it crosses while outing or if it's a trans person who's exiterating.

Now I'm thinking of the exit that's so powerful we must iterate it. We repeat. We're always leaving something behind, always coming out. It hurts. This is expected. Dance.