Rupture 2 by Kitto Maddrell

Image by Hailey O’Gorman

A Guide to Measuring Time

STEP ONE

Consider using lightning, multiply

the distance by five. Slice open a tree.

The light and dark circles should clarify

how many years it was able to see.

STEP TWO

Lacking lightning or trees? Try your body.

Start by removing hairs - BEWARE CAN CAUSE

HAIR GROWTH! Be careful the work isn't shoddy.

Note that it’s most painful around the jaws.

STEP THREE

In but a few years and tears, your face clears.

Laser the rest: a biannual clock!

Look at that lovely blank wall for five years…

Make small talk as the stranger zaps your cock.

STEP FOUR

To quote Macek translating Shakespeare:

“Vždy vycházel jsem z toho, že jste žena,

co chaby rým má za mamění času.”

(I always assumed that you were a woman,

who considers a weak rhyme to be a loss of time)

My body feels like a battleground or a courtroom.  It’s a site of victories and losses with a legal history spoken to by cases such as: Corbett v Corbett (1969), Rees V United Kingdom (1986),  P vs S and The Cornwall Council (1994), and Christine Goodwin (and ‘I’) v United Kingdom (2002).

It’s amazing the amount of difference a prefix like ‘cis’ or ‘trans’ can make to a body. The difference doesn’t have to amount to any physical one, however in the legal and medical system they are seen as astronomically different. It has led to a different experience of time. After five years of waiting on the Laurels gender clinic I’ve been told I’ll finally be seen in early 2022. Every year and a half they’ve given a rough date.

Now I’m going private for hair removal my life has entered a new cyclical pattern; save money, pay for treatment, prepare for treatment, make tiny progress, save again. Rinse repeat. At the very least it delays any chance of saving for a house, not that many people my age manage that. And more often than not it feels like living in stasis. Like I’m not able to live yet until strangers decide it’s time for me to start a second puberty. I am under no illusions as to my position of relative privilege however; my gender identity is legal in the UK unlike for non-binary people, and my body isn’t the target of racialized transphobia like black trans woman. I’m just tired.

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Edited by Hailey O’Gorman