Metamorphosis; Elegy by Thistle Dunsmuir

Metamorphosis

I cannot remember how many lives I have lived this year

or who I was before them,

what aching child clutched the bars of my rib cage

in the cold of last January 1st.

That is always the way New Years finds me,

metamorphized beyond recognition

cradling the bone spikes

on which I grew this year’s wings,

wondering if I can use them to start a fire

when the new ones grow in.

If I wanted to write an obituary for the me of before

I could follow the blood stains

back through the merry-go-round of the year

memorize the poems they spell out

scribe their symbols back onto my skin;

I stopped wanting to years ago.

I need my hands to do more than retrace old letters.

I have long since lost the map to the places I have buried myself

let tree roots grow through the eye sockets of my past skulls

so many bones left to sprout gardens

and give a home to wishes

I don’t remember abandoning.

Every night before I go to sleep

I bid myself goodbye, unsure who I will be when I wake up

unsure if I am already somebody new

preparing to see their first sunrise;

the sunrise is always more beautiful the first time.

I am so glad I get to see it for the first time so often.

Elegy

This island is

an open wound,

a graveyard of viscera

overlaid across

softly sleeping trees

and gentle sunsets.

A trail of blood

connects every sacred spot;

I can’t tell

how long ago it dried

or if it ever will.

My footsteps are slick

and unsure

on ridges of overturned bone.

I, with my degree in walking forward,

rendered still and stationary,

a reluctant mourner

at a funeral so old

the caskets have turned to dust

and the choir cannot remember the words

to this tuneless elegy.

Thistle Dunsmuir is a queer, trans poet currently residing on the traditional, unceded territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking people. Their work explores themes of mental health, healing and identity and has been published in Vagabond City Press, Sea and Cedar Magazine, Queer Toronto Literary and others.