A TRANS GIRL VISITS HER FAMILY

BY MAPLE SCORESBY

Hiding in the single stall men's room,
I try to reach out for help.
But there is no service
in this backwoods temple, and 
the wifi is password protected.

With a sigh I leave the safety
of the small room and locked door
to wade into the sea of blood
relatives pouring into the pews,
and slide into my saved seat.

Standing at the podium,
the Elder gestures to the body
of my dead grandfather;
starting the eulogy
by praising the Church.
-
	In two years my 
        grandmother will also be
	eulogized by this same
	Elder, who is her brother
	by mother and by faith.

        Just as bereft as the rest
        of the congregation,
        he will use her death
        to accuse the left for
        the downfall of our nation.

	I won't attend in person
	but my mother will send me
        the recording and I will see
	the world is ending
	and I am the one to blame.
-
Here and now, the Elder invites
others to share, admitting
my grandfather had his flaws
and reminding us, it isn’t the time
to speak ill of the dead.

A long silence before
a Brother stands and speaks
on how active he was in the church,
these last months and weeks. Nods
of agreement flood the foyer.

At the social after the ceremony,
I trace footsteps of my past life;
as people who refuse to know me
give conditional condolences to
the person that I used to be.

CRAB APPLES

BY MAPLE SCORESBY

Unsupervised grandchildren gather
around a row of crab apple trees,
picking the bitter browning fruit off
the ground around the tree’s roots;
too young and small to grab the
pristine bright green apples, hanging
high in the branches of the tree.

The kids don’t mind though. They
know that if they root around enough
in the mush decomposing by their feet,
eventually they will find a crisp bite
of emerald, sour enough to make
their faces crinkle up just as
good as any high hanging fruit.

Maple Scoresby (she/her) is a Denver poet who tends to deposit her paychecks into the local claw machines instead of the bank. Her poetry tackles topics like gender identity, double standards, and pizza sauce. In her spare time, Maple likes to cry about how terrible she is at Street Fighter while drinking an obscene amount of eggnog.