Local Artist Highlight: Morgan Ainsley

Morgan Ainsley is a gender-fluid writer who lives in Fort Collins, CO.  They have been writing as an avocation since the second grade, thanks to the influences of their maternal grandfather, who was also a writer.  Morgan has focused on the path of poetry as a genre they love and enjoys both reading and writing.  In addition to writing, Morgan works as a gender therapist and hopes one day to become a registered poetry therapist.

“The first person I came out to…”

I remember sitting alone on the couch
Alone in the house
My mind churning and racing at the same time,
“What’s wrong with me?”
“This isn’t real”
“I must be going through a phase”
“maybe it will fade away”
“but what if it doesn’t?”
Five, ten, fifteen minutes elapsed
I picked up a pen and piece of paper.
I started to write a letter to myself,
Accepting myself
Loving myself
allowing myself to be totally lost in what appeared to be only two gender options at the time
“Maybe It’s okay to be this or maybe be that
maybe I don’t have to have my shit together
I kept writing, kept promoting, kept affirming
Not giving a shit if what I was saying was true or if I was just whistling in the graveyard.
And then when I was done…I folded my letter down to the size of a business card
I stuck it in the hidden compartment of my wallet
And until this poem…told no one about this letter
Many days I thought about that letter
I braced and braved the storm to buy a skirt and wear it.
Then I bought two more, and then heels, and a men’s blazer to match
I continued to knit, started to tat- at home and on airplanes.
wore makeup- eyeliner first and then the rest.
I wore steampunk dressed like an proper Englishman,
I drew pictures of androgynous clothes I wanted to learn how to sew.
the effect of the letter started to take form
Each day things around my gender seemed a little softer
A little more malleable
A little more moisturized with self-grace
I look back on it all and look forward where it’s headed-
Yeah…it was a coming-out letter to myself
I carried in my hip pocket

Transition

It takes me a long time to feel my feels
Working through the barbed wire
The dust, the sweltering heat
The dark sticky nights
The glimpses and peeks of potential prosperity
Sunshine, blue sky and gentle breezes
Riding on my back
Begging my mind to turn back
To the days of easy ways
When translating the depths of the soul
Was an endeavor for the gurus and monks
The shamans and curanderos
All of this and the question “why?”
Is returned with “why so long?”

Luna

I talk to the moon today
It seems hidden beneath the sun
Yet I see its face pimpled with dust and stone
Absorbing, reflecting
Feeling all alone
I talk to the moon today
It listens while lacking moral code
Not knowing who to love, who to judge
Pulling, yearning
Moving ocean tides
I talk to the moon today
As it falls below horizon’s line
Greeting a new batch of earthly on-lookers
Working, warming
Feeding hungry souls 

When I say that I love you

When I say that I love you
I mean that I love you
I adore you
I cherish you
You sow joy into my essence.
It may be at that very moment
Or from a collection of memories past
But when I say that I love you
I mean that I love you.
A heartfelt expression
that is nothing less than drops of rain
And if they come on like a deluge
You can either get out your muck-a-lucks
Or dance barefooted in the puddles
Because remember after all
… it is the rain …
What else am I to do?