Two Poems by Elliott Carter
/Aubade
That night you built a bonfire on the street corner— remember?
Everyone walking by on their way home from parties
stopped there a while to shiver a little less violently.
You wished they would stay longer as they left.
To pay a compliment or two to the fire’s precise construction.
I fantasized going off with them, but I couldn’t leave you cold.
If it had been summer, we would have waited for dawn.
There would have been birds and dew. But it was winter.
Nights are long and end just like that.
As the bonfire went out, we went inside. There I was,
kneeling by your bed, the lights off, holding your hand.
When you speak, it’s like the world has run out of eyes.
I slept for just a while until you shook me.
You were never happy with me, so I put my clothes in a bag.
You followed me out to smoke. A porch will lengthen any goodbye.
What to make of the bus ride home, or the snowflakes?
There is a gravity to weeping— a sudden collapse,
like those logs on their knees, crawling deeper into the fire.
When I Crawled Out the Creek
When I crawled out the creek
and looked into the water,
there wasn’t a single feature on my face.
No nose. No deep-set valley for the eyes.
There I was, ambiguous,
incomprehensible,
Spring’s shadowed oaks
freeing me from this body.
I grew my hair for a year—
cut it all off last week.
Decisions? Just whims
swelling over time.
(Last August
almost told my doctor
I want to transition.)
I never could stand that dead silk
falling into my eyes.
Silt caked into my pelvis.
Passing by the mirror,
staring at the face and body
that is apparently mine,
all the way into the namelessness
of steam-trapped curtains,
the question rises:
What if I’m not? If it’s all a lie?
But “he” turns me to glass.
And this has been going on
for a decade.
I am tired of my inaction, but I feel dangerous—
Every morning, a thousand knives
sprout from my face.
The surgeries, the hormones,
could render me acidic:
a eunuch, and with what beauty left?
Would you be able to tell
I killed a man to get here?
Will I leave that much blood on my hands?
Author’s Note: Poems change so much. I started “Aubade” by obsessing over the key to this house, and this one time I tried to give it back. The person closed my hands around it and told me to keep it. In the end, the time I said “no” turned out to be less emotionally charged than the time I was told to leave. Eventually, abuse can convince us to beg for our own destruction.
I received a comment in a workshop that “When I Crawled Out the Creek” wasn’t quite framed correctly—that transness is more about becoming a person than it is about destroying a person. But emotions are rarely this neat! I don’t like how my body currently is, but I am also terrified of saying goodbye to it.
Elliott Carter is a non-binary artist who is surviving. They studied poetry at the University of Virginia and has been involved in spoken word communities in the DMV. They want to bury their shame, live a good life. On Twitter and Instagram as @frutsnacc.
