Pressed Petals
Haikus from My Feminization Journey I never thought of myself as a poet. If anything, I always believed poetry belonged to the effortlessly artistic - the ones who could spin metaphors without blushing, who knew exactly how to capture longing in twelve syllables. And yet, years ago, when my feminization journey was still a fragile whisper in my heart, I stumbled upon haiku. Three lines. Seventeen syllables. A moment, crystallized. It felt safe. Haiku did not demand grand declarations. It asked only for honesty. A season. A sensation. A breath. And so I began writing one nearly every day - sometimes shy, sometimes trembling, sometimes glowing with pride. A woman on her way who needed a small container for very big feelings. Recently, I read back through my collection. Page after page of small poems, like pressed flowers from different seasons of myself. I cried more than once. Not because the poems are technically brilliant - they aren’t - but because they hold the girl I was becom...