Dear Emma,

I’m going to be blunt. Your suffering isn’t going to end. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I know you’ve been through so much already and you haven’t even come to realise the impact that has made. I’m not going to tell you what’s going to happen since it won’t help you understand it at the time. You need to go through everything to arrive at the place you are now. Although part of me wishes I could change your path, I wouldn’t have the understanding and appreciation of life I do. Plus it’ll be a total paradox because if I tell you then you’ll avoid it and then how will I send this letter in the first place? Best to leave things be.

Dear “Miss Beznik” (as he used to call you),

That conversation was not normal.  I realize you were just a silly fourteen-year-old girl at the time, but it was not normal.

Dear Past Me,

Honestly, I can’t stand people who say that, if they could, they wouldn’t go back in time to change things they did because “it got me where I am today.” I can’t stand those people, and I know you can’t either. Because you are me, after all.

Dear early 20s Julia,

I wish you could meet almost 30 Julia.

She’s the feminist you swore you’d never be. She uses the female pronoun for God, hardly ever wears a bra (even when she probably should), and is living in what some in your family might call sin.

“One-ninety over one-ten.” The nurse
deflates the cuff with a huff and a puff,
taking measure of the pressure in my
being laid bare once again on a
white-sheeted table like an inedible spread.

I will miss
unexpected bulbous solitary pimples—
crocuses blossoming on my nose announcing the advent
of my upcoming spring

oh its just one of those things when the diva cupjust isntcomfy feeling leaks just get it out girl just go with the flow we drip for the earth baby flowers constant creation she in bloody underwear,

I'm a transwoman. This means I was mid-sized as male upon being born and raised as a boy, socialized as male, with all the horror that entails.

I was raised by my mother and three sisters. All my cousins were girls on the maternal side. I grew up sitting down in the bathroom, putting the seat down, taking baths sometimes, and wondering when my breasts would grow.

the cramps, the headaches, the
moodiness, the tiredness,
the need for chocolate and sweets,
being horny for long peroids

Two years have passed since my last menstrual period, and I'm done with bleeding forever.

This ought to fill me with joy. Though my period occurred at regular intervals for forty-two years, its arrival always seemed to catch me by surprise. Often, a stream of blood would suddenly tumble into my underpants while I was strolling through a department store, entertaining a new lover, or working at a desk on an important project. I'd feel that telltale rush, and the accompanying fear that I would leave a trail of blood marking my passage, like Gretel with her bread crumbs. Want to know where to find me? Follow the droplets.

Are wombs a kind of echo chamber for picking up vibrations from the universe at large? Is menstrual blood the language in which women speak to each other, even across time or space? Alas, this writer does not have enough information to risk giving general answers to these questions. I can only offer my own experience as evidence.

My vagina had a fracture but I did not have any health insurance. 
I stapled the pedals. 
Refusing to nourish the mother inside. The little girl screamed. nudenovelties. White knuckled nothing. 
My uterus wanted to cry but I swallowed amphetamine and stuck a thick flesh pencil inside.

“Please call me back. Something terrible has happened.”

That was the message I left on my mom’s pager when I got home from school. While I waited for her to call back, I sat on the toilet. I placed two maxi pads in my underwear, slightly overlapping, just like I’d seen her do. Thick, with two strips of adhesive going down the length of the pad, they went nearly from my belly button to my lower back. I was eleven.

My story must begin with the fact that I was raised Catholic. Or that my mother spent the first ten years of her life growing up in the shadow of a convent. Or that her older sister, her closest sister (there were two others, plus two brothers) volunteered at said convent.  Just for fun.

I left my mother holding neck scarves
I had selected from the display
neatly arranged by patterns
separated by thin dividers-

Oh ferchrissake, just say it already. 
I won't pout or get all teary or give you the silent treatment
or grab the car keys and slam doors like was my M.O. 
in our beginning eons, ages, lifetimes ago. 
You needn't be gun shy. 
I’m a grown-up now. Also, weary. Just spit it out.

Suddenly, I thought about how much I had been walking lately. I thought about my steps; how many steps I have made today, how many steps I will make until dark. One, two, three, seven, twenty-one, forty-two, ninety-eight—back to Office No. 301 to get the dissolution certificate of the company. A company that went bankrupt in 1983 and its founders still have to deal with the problems...even 30 years later. It seems slightly unfair to me. After that there are the subway stairs and me walking up and down the dock waiting for the train to Piraeus to come. Too many steps in a day. Too many steps to be made by a woman.

I don’t remember the last words my dad spoke to me. I’m sure it was something inconsequential or even nonsensical. After all, he wasn’t totally lucid for the last several days (or even several weeks) of his life. Every time I left the room, I tried to make sure that I said “I love you,” just in case it ended up being the last words he ever heard. Or maybe I said it more so that I could feel positively about our final interaction as I tried to go on living my life. It didn’t work.

Dear Daughter,

[The last time I] wrote you, I was 25 weeks pregnant, and I hadn’t yet experienced the miracle of seeing your face. It’s now been two months since the midwife caught the squirmy, slimy, perfect alien from my belly (that was you) and said that you were mine. Every day since then, I haven’t been able to stop marveling at your beauty. It’s not mainly a matter of your appearance—although you are adorable—but instead, it’s the radiance of your whole personhood. Here’s what I see when I look at you.

Hello lovely – You don't exist in this world yet, but I’m already in love with you and how deeply beautiful you are. The mere hint of your existence is exciting and overwhelming.

I’m excited to meet you and witness how your presence will shift the world.