Revulsion is a word hardly strong enough to convey how I felt about what you did. Not only did you bend toward eliminating lives of those you must view as abhorrent, you have created fear, where no fear should be.

Why a knife? why not a conversation? Why slash and stab the bodies of others? If so conflicted, why not carry a sign, protest? Hardly redeeming, but at least it’s not physically violent.

Was it to satisfy the unyielding conditions of your religion? or did you strike at yourself, in a struggle with your own confusion, knowing, because of your upbringing, you must remain hidden? I speculate.

I speculate further: as your country of origin is Ecuador, chances are that you’re Roman Catholic. And so you’ll know the stance of the Vatican, is still, that non-binary and transgender individuals are acting on impulses that should instead be perceived as challenges to be overcome. (A plain enough indication that the Vatican has never had a real conversation with a trans person.)

You have a story. I’d like to know it. Here’s mine. I’m an aging cis white male, that, out of five children, had one daughter. Now I have five sons. It’s been seven years since we were given the news that she would be transitioning.

I’m not a demonstrative person. I keep things to myself. This was hard. I grieved the loss of a daughter. Most of my family, and some of my friends, are conservative, evangelical, with an understanding of gender not unlike that of the Vatican. No doubt there were misgivings. But my family and friends are also caring and loving.

I know our discussion would be difficult. You, defending a binary worldview, or concealing yourself through projection. Me, opposed to your view, yet hoping to get through. What should not be difficult, is that we treat each other the way we want to be treated. A teaching from scripture, also supported by the Vatican.

There are, I despair, many that support you, not your actions, perhaps, but your apparent position. Some may even see you as a martyred hero. From the other side, you’ll endure disgust, belittling, hatred. “You look just like I thought you would look,” is one of the kinder comments on social media.

Here’s the little I know. We begin this journey with a kind of self-love essential for survival, but also, as we grow, for attending to that inner being that keeps whispering, “this is who you are, as whole, how will you bring it to be?” The wondrous, complex, mysterious thing is, that on our own, we can’t, that in fact we receive our “selves” through the eyes of others. And if those eyes are loving, we flourish, and respond in kind. If equivocal, we live with anxiety. If exacting, or abandoning, we manufacture a shell, or become brittle as shale. The Herculean but imperative effort here is to seek the eyes of the loving, welcoming Spirit who resides within, who will lead you to ones who have already turned toward you and received you. And you, in turn, will be gift for them.

Perhaps you can see what you have in common with many trans people. Who in shedding their persona for personhood, have endured eyes like walls, glances like spears, to the point of self-destruction, or for some, aggressive reaction. When what they desire is merely tolerance and understanding. They’ve long known their choice. To stay masked, and so exist in a living death, or pursue, who they wholly are, and live authentically. Despite the risk that should not be.

Even during my grieving, when I turned toward my trans son, my eyes overflowed with love, and as it happened, I too, moved toward wholeness. Geovanny, I pray this for you.

Christ wrote in the sand, where he stooped,
beside the “adulteress”, who trembled,
facing her imminent demise by stones,
as prescribed by the executives of religion.
And when, as reported, Christ said, while writing,
“Whoever is without sin, cast the first stone,”
there was a pause; we looked at each other,
our blood still high, but who, here,
would cast that guiltless stone?
We waited, too long, and the frenzied lust
of our righteousness dissipated like steam.
None of us could look at the face of the woman,
who had turned toward Christ,
or look at each other; only at the hunched figure
of the man who had spoken, who then went on writing.
Our hands hung down, weighted by rocks.
One dropped his stones, and limped away,
then another, and another. Christ kept on writing
in the dirt, verse that no one recorded,
in other words, the perfect poem,
the poem that came without effort,
made some humanity happen,
then was erased,
to make way for the next.

She walks often, almost daily, takes a well-known path
through an open park, then a tree-lined street back to her home.
She walks through every season; she greets their temperaments.

She is attentive to what comes as she walks: the greens and blues,
the blades and blossoms, rising, opening, closing, disappearing,
making every walk, despite its regular route, unique.

She returns to her many commitments, she has family, and friends.
Her relationships are bread and wine to her. She gives of herself, readily,
but like the broad banks of a quiet river, she keeps good boundaries.

She pays attention to her appearance, her body, her bearing,
but not much, is she guided by the conventions of Vogue, or standards
offered by Glamour. She neither welcomes nor resists, aging.

She is aware and despairs the devolution in the social fabric;
but is not taken in by partisan resentments and polarizing slogans;
she has chosen to live in the muddy centre, with openness and kindness.

She has tasks and projects, equal to her abilities, and pursues
one or two that move her beyond what she accepts about herself.
She is willing to fail, but hopes to be surprised.

Her annoyances do not eclipse her ability to laugh, often as not, at herself.
She has worries, certainly, and a few fears. She knows of sorrow’s paralysis;
she has her own parade of losses. Mostly, is she settled about her own mortality.

Time has reshaped her faith: more childlike, not preoccupied by concepts,
nor grasping for containers, or conclusions; but faithful to a form of mystery
that calls her inward, then outward, to the sublime mess of humanity.

She is not a stranger to standing on a shore in hushed wonder,
holding an oyster shell, running her fingers over its polished interior,
watching its mauves and silvers, deepen, then lighten, under a layered sky.

She moves more easily now, with an abiding belief in life, and has come
to a confident hope in the transforming power of a day well lived.
She does not aim for bliss, is happy with times of contentment.

Still, sometimes she almost cries out, astonished, by just being here,
and the real possibility she might not have been.
She has no answer for this, just a deepening sense of gratitude.

More and more she finds solace in the realness of what is around her,
or rather, she has come to trust in the light that shines
through all things of this earth.

Dented, squat, aluminum cylinder, with a flat handle
the length of a child’s forearm. It hangs on a nail
beside a five-gallon crock of well water that sits on a shelf
just inside a fly-stippled screen door. A sweaty pack of kids,
on break from hide-and-seek, are lined up in the fading heat
of a July evening, and the water, cool and clear, is of nectar.

I feel it, still, some 60 years later, this love, for my cousins,
for that farm, not far from the Whitesand River dam, ripe
with pickerel, for the horse-drawn cutter and rake, resting
in calf-high quackgrass, across from the car bodies, rusting,
among a cluster of poplars, down from the shop that held
the forge and the bellows and horseshoes; and in the yard,
the smell of cattle and pasture, cut hay, and cow manure;
and chickens scattering over purslane and pineapple weed,
tame geese honking and shitting beside the drying slough,
the choirs of crickets coming on in the rose-grey gloaming,
and the drained dipper in my hand, the slight tin aftertaste,
the water, spilling down my throat, a deep fresh coolness,
rinsing, radiating through my ribs to the ends of my limbs,
my whole skinny body, like a small piston of joy.