Two Poems by Sara Hovda
May 15, 2023
Prayer of Thanksgiving
I. My now is so merciful: Now the split and shiver has settled between my legs. Now the little blue pill is all I need to swallow. Now the wind brushes the bottom of my tits after a hot morning. Nature forgave the loan of boyhood. Now I’m whole. II. Someone retcon my childhood, and the story will be perfect, a stone the pink of my lip gloss. No one would know anymore there was boyhood except that it happened. And those who remember speak of it only in hushed tones, curse that it was. But it had to happen, didn’t it, for the world to open like a handwritten card instead of some premade Hallmark line. I have to love you too, don’t I? Your unbearable weight like a bag of groceries I can barely anymore lift on my own.
Request
I know it’s not sensible to expect my father’s love to have been immutable, but I pretend sometimes his understanding of the spectrum of gender, the blunder of my assignment, and my need to swallow these pills. Whatever pulls me forward despite his absence, I don’t know, and I don’t know what keeps me asking for his acceptance, but tonight, when the clock strikes its darkling hour and the neighborhood dogs have tired themselves of barking and all the cars in their driveways have fallen asleep, maybe I can hear his voice again, even if he just says no.
About Sara Hovda
Sara Hovda is a transgender woman living in Minnesota where she works as a freelance writer and editor. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in magazines such as Frontier Poetry, Nimrod, and Nashville Review, among others.