Maggie Bowyer

I Don’t Want to be Trans Anymore

I don’t want my comments section to make me cry every morning. Even the nights I don’t spend fighting, I
wake up to rage - how dare I thank someone for including me in the healthcare conversation. How could I erase
women by putting my pronouns in my bio? I don’t want to wake up to another, “You’re so gorgeous,” or “What
a strong lady!” in my inbox. I don’t want the first thing I read to be someone misgendering me. I don’t want to
dress femme for likes. I don’t want to thank them and be polite. I don’t want to be denied emergency surgery
because one of my forms has the correct gender listed. I don’t want to tell them that’s not correct to get surgery.
I don’t want to not get surgery. I don’t want to die because I’m trans. I don’t want to die by not being trans. I
don’t want to die. I don’t want to be trans because this world doesn’t want me if I’m trans. I want to be trans
because I want a world with trans people. I don’t want to be trans on this planet. I want to be who I am so badly
I will let myself hate my identity before I give it up. I want to be myself so direly I will let you all kill me before
I stop taking up space. I want to be trans I want to be trans I want to be who I am

Another Day, Another Poem

TW discussing transphobia

I am eating raw chicken served to me by friends / I am gagging on political niceties and no one notices / Please,
intentionally misgender me at dinner and then say you’ll bring me ice water if it will help me chill / Please, tell
me all the ways I should take my own life and provide the steak knife / Please, tell me if I wasn’t “pretending to
be a man” you wouldn’t roast me / The FBI is compiling a list of threats / The local PD didn’t take it seriously
but now the menu reads like a list of hate crimes / The last time I was flayed online was last Friday and already
my mentions are flooded with vitriol already / It’s only been a week and I spent most of that time offline / Don’t
you realize we’re in a genocide? / Or is the recession so bad you’re licking fascism like salt off their palms? /
What does bigotry taste like when covered in sugar? / How do you digest your own hate? / Does it break down
in your gut slowly? / My pronouns taste like poison when prepared by you / Normally they taste like fresh
picked cherry tomatoes from the garden, but with one touch you rotted them / How can we preserve our
remaining fruits?

I Want to be Trans

I melt every time my fiancé calls me handsome, beloved and betrothed / There are days when I almost take a
knife to my nipples and bleed my boobs out of me / But most of the time I think I’m a damn lucky dude to
glimpse boobs like mine daily / I want my hair down to my hips in vibrant hues because pretty boys exist and I
am proof of it / I put on makeup because it is wearable art / I dress in skirts to taunt and button ups to stunt / I
always preferred the term tomboy as a child and now I can’t scrub the word woman off of me quick enough / I
am vivacious and effervescent / But most of all I am euphoric / I am alive but moments away from death / We
all are, we just don’t know how few flashes are left / I am enraged and I am filled with joy / I am a sapphic boy /
A yearning man / A burning past / And a brilliant future

Please, Defenestrate Me

TW suicide

Defenestration: the action of throwing someone out of a window

My AP Euro teacher taught us about the Defenestration of Prague and for the rest of the semester threatened us
with expulsion via flailing from the second floor

He lent me his first edition Voltaire and taunted he would toss me through the fiberglass if I lost it (but I could
tell he was being even more sarcastic than usual)

So please, defenestrate me. Preferably from farther up. Maybe a fifth floor? No, the fiftieth would probably
work better, but we’d have to drive to Charlotte and you might have time to talk me out of it.

I don’t want to be Sylvia Plath. I want to be Joan of Arch or John the Evangelist. Paint my goals with my blood
in the concrete. My message?

WE JUST WANT TRANS KIDS TO BECOME TRANS ADULTS (I’m sorry I am not one of them)

You don’t want to throw me off a building? Through a window? Fine.

I’ll defenestrate myself. Just promise you’ll go after everyone online who told me to do this. Get every last cent.

Give it to every trans kid I’m leaving behind. Get them safe housing and gender-affirming surgery. Beat the
fascist at their own money game. Build guillotines for them with their own dimes. Create a campaign

championing a Black, trans woman to fix this country, and don’t let her pay a penny. Use the leverage of my
privilege to get more financial commitments, then redistribute all of it.

Just make sure the obituary gets my pronouns right.

Fuck dying as a woman. Fucking dying at the hands of our entire government (where is the side supposedly
protecting us?) Fuck dying a simple martyr with a message.

I want to die in riches. I want to die as Robin Hood. I want to die by my hands, not theirs. I want to die with a
faltering grin and a free fall.

I want to die if it means I free you.

Maggie Bowyer (they/he) is a poet, co-host of the podcast Baked and Bookish, and the author of various poetry collections including Allergies (2023) and When I Bleed (2021). They’ve been published in Chapter Journal, The South Dakota Review, Wishbone Words, and more. Find their work on Instagram and TikTok @maggie.writes