Like a current
I was always

the liquid
bent, practicing

its voice,
but the naming—creek—

came later.

First my mother
called me daughter

when I told her
who I was

becoming.

She was an apple tree
in her giving,

dropping her fruit
on my bank.

I thought it was just
familial love,

the wish for your own
child to be happy

because in Minnesota
all the other women

who’d known me
before transition

saw me still
as a trickle of headwater

and not the stream
I became.

Language is a forest,
both the trees

and the space
between them.

I arrived
wet and whispering,

grasping for what
to call this existence.

Then I drove
to California

to write poems
among new people.

Thank you, Abigail.
Thank you, Katie

and Allison and Allison,
Goldberry and Frances

and Tatiana.

You saw a surge
of water

murmuring its own
approximation,

and you named me
woman.