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The Worms go all the way

Chapter One

A man stands on the pitcher’s mound. His deep skin glints with sweat under the unrelenting sun. He adjusts his hat, twiddles his fingers, and rubs the smooth baseball in his left hand against his jersey three times. Across the field, the catcher imperceptibly nods. He takes his stance, and the batter readies his. The bases are loaded, bottom of the ninth, and one hit could end the game in tears. He rears back, his body becomes liquid muscle, every tendon working in tandem, his planted feet up to the coiled spring of his legs, his boiling core powering the machines of his arms, time stretched to the very limit of it’s boundaries as his body naturally follows through, hurling the ball in a slider curve going just shy of 80 miles per hour, and the batter, desperate to connect and swinging as hard he can… misses. The ball drops at the last second, into the bottom right hand corner of the strike zone and just shy of the batter’s swing, into the waiting catcher’s mitt.

The stadium explodes as that sinks in. This strikeout was the last of the game. For the first time in living memory, the Wausau Worms of Wisconsin were going to the Major League, replacing the Milwaukee Bison after their less-than-impressive attempt this year.

Reading Year in Review 2024!

I’ve decided to do one of these! I made it my New Years Resolution last year to read more, and in 2024 I read 23 books!! Which is more than I’ve read in years! I’m very proud of myself and would like to reflect on it, so here goes! (I also couldnt find a template for these so I made up my own categories)

Favourite re-read: Blackout by Mira Grant – I’m a real sucker for the Newsflesh trilogy, as well as the side stories. I”ve always been a fan of zombie fiction, and I’ve loved these books for many many years. That love has extended to her entire bibliography, next years list will probably have Into the Drowning Deep in this exact same spot!

Favourite translated book: Butter by Asako Yuzuki – A really interesting book about a journalist getting sucked into the orbit of a convicted serial killer. It’s about manipulation and feeling trapped, and about learning how to live instead of just surviving. I loved this book, and it was easy to get swept away alongside the main character, Rika. I also got some new recipes out of it!

Favourite book published before 2000: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler – Published in 1993, this certainly isn’t the oldest book on my list, but it remains incredibly poignant. Set in a post-apocalyptic 2024 (ouch), this book goes into the themes of social inequality and climate change, and is a must-read if you haven’t already. The sequel, Parable of the Talents, is my first book for 2025 and I can’t wait to get stuck in.

Favourite book published in 2024: The Anonymous Letters of C Forestier by Felicia Davin – I hadn’t read the previous books in the French Letters series, but that didn’t hold me back in the slightest. The characters are so incredibly charming, and I absolutely adore the inclusive world that Davin has created here. I plan on diving into the rest of the series, and I recommend you do the same!

Favourite book of the year!: Faebound by Saara El-Arifi – This book really snuck up on me! It was the last book that I read this year, starting it on Saturday the 28th and finishing just before the new year! A wonderfully written fantasy, it is the first in a trilogy and I very much look forward to reading the next book, Cursebound, when it comes out!

V

New meaning given
to a life I’ve left behind,
Femininity paralleled
in the form I once called mine.
Never did it seem to me
to hold beauty, grace, and charm,
but that, my dear, is why
I can bear witness without harm.
I’m proud of who I am,
standing trusted, tall and true,
but the reflection that I see
paints perfect pictures
when on you.

Leaving it all behind

I look down at the card in my hand, checking the address despite having it memorised for weeks now. Up at the seemingly abandoned warehouse that the map on my phone had led me to. The industrial park I’m standing in looks as deserted and run-down as the warehouse does and it sends a shiver of primal fear down my spine. Am I really here? Am I really doing this?

My entire life has been defined by the desire to run that flows through my veins, moving out and away from everyone I’ve ever known at eighteen years old, starting fresh in new towns every couple of years when the restlessness grows too strong, when too many people know my name, when people start asking pointless questions of where I’m from. I can’t help this urge within me, but I’ve finally identified it as a need to be someone else entirely. Once I figured that out and started researching, the rest fell into my lap with suspicious ease.

Meeting up with ‘John Smith’, a name so generic it was clearly fake, being subjected to the weirdest and most vague interview of my entire life, only for him to leave with no contact details but a blank card with only an address- this address -printed on it. It all felt so surreal. The idea that I could leave my life behind without dying. It intrigued me enough to lead me here. So now, on the precipice of getting everything I feel that I’ve ever wanted, I hesitate. Once I step inside that building, there’s no turning back. I’ll be wiped off the face of the earth, nothing but a memory in the lives of every person I’ve met. Finally, truly free.

fourth

My love is long gone
Never to return
I know that they’re out there
but it’s not my bridge to burn

I wish that things were different
Who doesn’t hold regrets?
I hold mistakes too dearly
They sprout and root in my chest
Splitting cracks in my foundation
Filling heart and head and breast

I miss you like September
It’s meaningless and bleak
Yet tightly I still hold on
I can never seem to speak
the hurt that sticks inside me
My resolve is quick to creak
and crumble and
break

poem 5

Swim back to the surface
young man, you aren’t allowed to drown
Your work here isn’t finished yet
Your head, it bears no crown
Fear festers deep inside of you
In blood, in bones, in teeth
But it’s grip on you is not complete
Despite the fact it brings you grief

pride?

We’re coming to the end of pride month once again. Corporate twitters will go back to their boring profile pictures, pride themed events will (mostly) come to an end, pride themed items won’t be restocked, but that doesn’t mean that pride is really over. After all, having pride in yourself should be a year-round commitment. Living through the bad times to see the good is a worthy cause to celebrate, and I, for one, am proud of myself. For surviving the hard times and for lifting up other trans people to the best of my ability, I am proud. Every trans person should be proud and we deserve to celebrate who we are unashamedly.

I love pride month. Typically, there’s a lot of lovely summer days (it being June and all), I feel more comfortable with being visibly queer, and I have an excuse to celebrate my queerness openly with the people I love. Of course, there are hardships too, especially now with the growing vitriol from mainstream media and the government, but that doesn’t mean that we should lose hope. Statistics¹ still show that anti-trans viewpoints – namely “gender critical” ideology – are not the mainstream and that the people who hold these views are a minority. The problem is simply that they are loud and often difficult to ignore because they apparently believe that the non-stop harassment of trans people will make us go away (spoiler alert: it won’t). Transgender people will never go away, we have always existed and we always will, if they won’t accept that then that is entirely their problem. I refuse to apologise for loving myself and loving being myself wholeheartedly.

ants

Whispers eat away at me
Numerous, like ants, but
Benign
I can ignore them for a while
But problems always surface
Over time

Tiny tunnels in my mind
And cracks I cannot heal
Burrowing bugs and worms that squirm
In search of their next meal

Whispers live inside of me
Numerous, like ants, and
Alive
I can’t ignore them anymore
They move, are monsterous
Are mine

Thick sludge floods capilleries
Patches cracks with bile
The whispers are a part of me
Together, one nest, one mind

online self-care

I’ll be honest with you. Your trans friends are tired. I’m exhausted. After months of seeing you-know-who pop up on our timelines or some hashtag about them trending I’m sick of it. Now to know that it has all led up to a transphobic, poorly written novel which was in production- or at the very least was pitched -while her publishers represented trans writers, it all seems like an elaborate hit piece on an entire group of marginalised people. So I’m sick of hearing about her or anyone who supports her and I know that I’m not the only one. Do us a favour and stop tweeting about her or sending your trans friends articles about how shitty she is (trust me, we know). Instead start boosting trans creatives. I have been seeing more of this type of thing trending, which is heartwarming, so I’m mostly reiterating the point in my own medium. The sheer frequency of this is what brings me to my topic, which is the importance of cultivating your own online experience.

This essay is primarily aimed at other trans people, but I hope that I can offer useful advice to anyone else who may be reading too. For starters, I love the internet, and I have done for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid I played endless flash games. As I grew up I discovered fanfiction (I refuse to be embarrassed because it led me to my current aspirations). I have made countless friends over the years, some I no longer talk to, some I do even after ten long years. It is a seemingly bottomless pit of information and knowledge and I think that on the whole it really is an incredible thing. Without it I may not have even discovered who I really am. I didn’t know what “transgender” really meant until I learned about it online, and it was a blessing that I did. I finally had a word to describe how I was feeling, and unless you’ve felt it you have no idea what that was like. Now, however, with the ever growing focus on social media (or maybe because I feel like I’ve aged ten years with each birthday), it doesn’t feel the same.

personal history

One of my brothers asked me to cover this next topic, and it’s something that I think about frequently. I came out as trans later in life; I chose my name when I was sixteen and started transitioning medically at twenty two. I have a lot of trans friends who also came out/started transitioning later in life, and the questions posed to me were: how do we talk about them from before they began transitioning? How do I refer to myself from before my transition? What’s the most respectful way to approach this? Obviously I am writing this from my own perspective first and foremost, but I will do my best to be as concise as possible. I will also be writing this essay in two parts. The first part will be advice for cis people on how to be respectful towards trans people and their personal histories, while the second part will be more discussion based and aimed towards other trans people. I felt that this approach would have the most cohesive result for the points I will try to make.

I want to talk about my own experiences first. As stated above, I initially came out at sixteen, and the one word that best sums up this period of my life is “confusing”. It was during this time that I began to experiment with my own idea of gender, and also when I first started to ask my close friends and family to call me “Finn”. It took a long time for me to reach a stage where I was comfortable with myself, but one of the biggest influences on that comfort was the acceptance of my friends and family. One of my brothers stopped using my deadname entirely, my cis friends would regularly check in and confirm they were using the pronouns that made me feel the most comfortable, things like that. Their initial support in these formative years of my life gave me more comfort and joy than I think they will ever realise, and I’m ever grateful for them.