Dear Phoenix,
We are all stars. You have burned and reignited a thousand million times. Do you remember when we played together, blazing across the sky, laughing so hard that colors squeezed from our eyes? Do you know that there are others in our line, many others, who are what you would call trans? Our family contains many shapeshifters, people changing form, people changing their bodies at will. Before me, there were more.
Do you remember when I came to you in your dreams? When you cried in the middle of the night as you tried to be a woman? Remember the bad perms, the makeup, the stockings, the razors to your legs and underarms when all you wanted was facial hair and growth between your bowed legs? I held you and whispered, be strong, I’m with you. I stroked your forehead. I blew the dust out of your eyes. I drew you a warm bath. I sprinkled holy water across your chest. I knelt down and prayed when you forgot to pray.
Do you remember that you are all things at all times? You are the future, the gingko tree spreading and dropping its golden leaves. You are the past, gates that kept out tigers and thieves. You are the present, a gift, a shelter to all.
Our family knows how to fly through the night sky. We are birds in the highest branches, owls hooting and calling to our kin. Our wings flap to the rhythm of our heartbeats. We are octopus changing color. We are dolphins exiting the waters coming onto land. Behind that tree, behind that clearing, in the first soft light of morning where images blur, you and I merge.
Do you remember when I held you before you were born? You birthed me with your words. You gave me form–a butterfly dreaming he was a man, a man dreaming he was a butterfly. You give yourself form–a phoenix, a rebirth song that burns and dies and rises again. Your scars are wings spread across your chest as you soar. Happy Pride, as your generation likes to say.
Love,
Soo Hyeon, your Korean transcestor from the late 1500s