for Brianna Ghey
If, when speaking of a photograph, convention dictates we consider its subject as captured.
If in the photograph she is captured smiling in a green field.
If the field is considered as open.
If behind her a treetop is turning unseasonably red.
If it is difficult, but not impossible, to resist a certain temptation to consider its unseasonable turning as symbolic.
If symbol is at times a kind of capture.
If in the photograph a cloud touched by western light is taking on the colour of her blush.
If it becomes evident that I am having some difficulty looking at her face.
If even a very beautiful and smiling.
If, when speaking of an action that may never be completed, convention dictates the action be considered as present and continuous.
If it is thus preferable to say ‘she is smiling’ rather than to say ‘she smiles’.
If what is girlhood completed.
If in the photograph she is smiling between mouthfuls of budget chocolate.
If they have considered her an ‘open person’.
If her outline against the green field must also describe a limit of imagination.
If, when speaking of any transsexual but especially of a transsexual girl, convention dictates we consider her body first as what has captured her.
If laughter of trans children.
If (as they say) first blush.
If in the photograph the precise arrangement of her fingers as she is holding a budget chocolate is almost expletive.
If changes to the adolescent body are considered as either permanent or impermanent.
If such questions are considered in The Times as ‘open’.
If entry wound.
If even broad daylight.
If, when speaking of a killing, convention dictates we refrain from speculation.
If just asking questions.
If outline is considered as a permanent change to the adolescent body.
If not every opening is a means of escape.
If we must first consider ‘safet’ and ‘legality’.
If girlhood is an outlaw season.
If, as a question of law, convention dictates the official record of her death be falsified.
If all official records are in a way untrue.
If, as a question of safety, we do not walk to the vigil unaccompanied.
If to each of us is evident a way onto the green field.
If in the photograph she is smiling and is looking back towards the camera in a way that I would like to call conspiratorial.
If this word must be a limit of metaphor where what I want is to say ‘breathes-together’.
If girlhood showing.
If the photograph is considered as an outline of her body against time.
If it is difficult, but not impossible, to resist a certain temptation to lay down inside this outline.
If we believe the body can at times act as a soul.
If what we do for one another is refrain.
If, when standing at the far side of any enclosed field, there is an arrangement of held hands that makes visible a gate.
If no two transsexuals are strangers.
If we are different but not strangers.
If it is not at all times true that we are captured standing finally alone in a green field as behind us a treetop turns unseasonably.
If she is not finally.
If we can know this because she is smiling there between mouthfuls of budget chocolate as someone takes a photograph.
If now we take a different kind of photograph, in which our hands are concealing her in a moment when she turns towards.
If the photograph makes outlaws of us all.
If we are joined there as in refrain.
If nothing can capture this refrain and nothing now completes it.
This poem was written in February 2023 in London, UK. It was first published in Magma Poetry in 2024 as third-place winner of the 2023/4 Magma Poetry Competition, judged by Ray Antrobus.