The First Rule of Buoyancy

as a child, i learned
while killing, do not think about being killed.

            when you are five, you will watch your father,
            while skinning a deer, rip the hide from the muscle
            like pulling apart the velcro on your pink light-up sneakers
            after you get home from your first day of kindergarten.

as a child, i learned
the right body can be resurrected to walk on water.

            it is the summer after second grade and
            insects you will never learn the name of float on top of the river,
            and you watch as they glide and you hold your breath.

            just trust the water, they said.
            trust you will float, and you will float.

            you were always a child that sank.

as a child, i learned
when a rabbit dies, it will scream so loud
you will think of this death-sound with every other death after.
even the quiet ones, as if this loudness could out-wail death,
as if there is no other option but to break open the air
with your grief the same way your father cracked apart the
deer’s ribs to pull its heart out.

            you have never eaten another animal’s heart,
            but you watch your father cut the bottom third off with a pocket knife
            and skewer it along a stick he finds by the edge of the woods.

            when it emerges, gleaming and slick from the smoke of the fire,
            dripping with grease and blood-fat,
            you smell this heart-third
            and even though you can still see your father’s hands
            red and pulped and trembling
            as he pulls out the center of this creature,
            you can’t help but notice your mouth water.

now, you think of which parts of yourself
you will slice off to make a meal from,
how you can rip your girlhood off you
with nothing but the right pair of hands,
which parts you could snap the blood vessels from,
easy as pulling out a weed,
all your good blood shaken loose like so much dirt.

            so consider this a window,
            consider the surgeon a precise and humble butcher,
            who fills the future with your own blood,
            which is, after all,
            the only water you’ve ever found safe enough to trust,
to close your eyes in,
and float.

Copyright © 2024 by Ollie Schminkey. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 2, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“This poem explores the tension between the lessons I was taught as a child growing up in rural Minnesota and my understanding of myself as I prepare to undergo top surgery (a gender-affirming surgery). Rurality/nature and transgender identity are so often portrayed as at odds, but for me, they are lovingly intertwined. In nature, the death of one thing is required for the life of another. What if that fact was beautiful instead of sad? What if the lessons I learned as a child were not as violent as I thought, but were actually guideposts towards loving myself?”
—Ollie Schminkey