Neither X nor Y (Intersex Triptych II)

My non-gendered genes

Speak to me

In mysteries

Inherently understood

In my youngest self

In being

In knowing

In the way I feel

I inhabit mystery

Because I do not fit into anything else

Just a few sets of letters

Neither X nor Y

Are libraries of different literature

A bible of otherness

Hidden in my blood

Which the world can read

In the ways I refuse to believe

That which I refute

Simply by existing

And so

As a child embodying contradiction

I challenged the world

And to be sure it challenged me back

Violently

But I believe

An innate and early sense

That the world had it wrong –

That even my parents and pastors

Couldn’t understand –

This sense gave me strength

To endure their attempts to change me

To endure the probing stares

And rude questions

To endure even the outright cruelty

Of the world’s discomfort

With that which can’t be neatly named

I realized

(Or maybe I never forgot)

That God has no body

So like trans kids

And queer kids

And all those wholly holy children

Who challenge us

With their refusal to be defined

I grew closer to God

Because I already lived with mystery

Alive in my questioning body

We who are born to otherness

Are also born to read inscrutable maps

To write our lives in a language the world may never understand

We are born to question

And to be a question

Which means we are born to seek

…

We are born to know God

This gift of otherness

Comes wrapped in queerness

But world,

Don’t be jealous!

You have your own privileges too