POETREE

One: I am trans and I am disabled. For me, intimacy often has physical aspects: lightgetsin wrote an excellent essay on some of these intersections, last year, entitled Do I Do It For You? Service kink and disability, on some of the ways in which disability can encourage or compel physical - and emotional - intimacy.

Two: when we talk about intimacy, about trust, we often frame it in terms of the physical. In terms of romance, yes: we fall in and out of love, and making that fall physical is only a little stretch; but also in terms of closeness, as Simon Armitage's Homecoming: Think, two things on their own and both at once/The first, that exercise in trust, where those in front/stand with their arms spread wide and free-fall/backwards, blind, and those behind take all the weight...

These are my two things, each on their own and both at once. These are what I carry with me when I offer you this poem.

For more about this poem - in origin terms - please see Gabe Moses' website, and his reading of the poem.

( How To Make Love To A Trans Person, Gabe Moses [explicit; detailed discussion of surgery] )