Angel Leal

where there are tusks

it’s time to abandon our pain & go looking again for the mammoth.
the wooly god of Siberia is hiding under a blanket of snow

like a giant lost child. for hundreds of miles there are no eyes
only the vast white empty page of possibility.

did you know you were the best friends i ever had
& the first trans friends of my life?

did you know the mammoth doesn’t originate in Siberia
but the ancient tropics of Africa? they left their first homes too

the wooly red hair i worship like myth
grew long to protect them from the elements.

& now you’re leaving Texas so your bodies can be safer.
so you can build new queer ecosystems in the snow.

but the iconic look of a mammoth may have never been
if they hadn’t left their friends. it is necessary to let go

of love to grow long red hair all over. to be a warm survivor.
i’m going to miss you for my whole life, or else

maybe, i will dream of tusks so desperately i’ll voyage too
one winter & finally get on estrogen in a safer state

a place where girls like me can sink her hands
in the icy ground until we can’t feel

pain, or the passing of time, only
the colossal bones of

yesterday, of possibility