Most mornings, I walk our dog Lizzy at our local park. Living so close to such a wonderful park has helped me become more active (and lose unwanted weight), and it’s just a great place to go for relaxation, creativity, and fun. Below is a pic I took of Lizzy (and me) a few days ago on one of our park outings (this is one pic from a gallery that I posted on TikTok and Instagram).

Last week, I took my tripod with us and recorded my reading of the first couple sections of Walt Whitman’s “[Song of Myself].”

I took my tripod with me again this morning when Lizzy and I went for our walk, thinking I would probably record the next chunk of this long poem. I also wanted to work on some of my own writing while we were there. Once I got comfortable sitting under a large tree, my mind went to a poem that I’ve been wanting to finish for a while, a poem I wrote the first draft of in 2013.

Sometimes I write a poem as soon as it comes to me. Other times, they take a dozen years.

This poem underscores something I’ve written about in both memoir and poetry—that my transness has always been present in my psyche, all the way back to my earliest memories. There were times where it was at the forefront, even before I had language to describe my selfhood, and there were times when it was locked away my conscious mind.

Like I said, I wrote the first draft of this poem in 2013. I rediscovered that draft when packing up our garage last year before we moved red state to blue state. In a plastic bin of unsorted miscellany, I found an old journal that I’d only written on the first five pages of. That draft was what was on the fifth page.

That was one of the times prior to my 2023 coming out that I started to realize and put language to my transness. But I was terrified, so I tossed the journal into a bin and locked myself back in the closet.

The poem text is below, followed by my reading.

Love y’all!💜thepoetmiranda📚

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedMaroon with a pattern of small flowers,white delicate petals—I knew they wouldsmell sweet in the spring wind—mom’s full length dressdragged the floor when I draped it over me.Do you wanna play dress up? I asked him.I’ll be the wife, the mom. I slipped intoa pair of her black pumps. The woman’s gracealready growing in my soul—the sourceof all magic—failed to reach my shuffling,confused feet. I didn’t know how to walkmyself. I knew only beginner's magic.He said, we’re too old to play this pretend,as though expectation is anythingbut illusion waiting to be unmasked.