Read the new piece in our EUPHORIA series — ‘in the end’ by rex renée (aka rexylafemme).

in the end

it suddenly becomes obvious that it’s just not necessary to be afraid of anything you love—it’s a message echoing between synapses as i stand in place amidst an orchestra of trees trembling in all directions. out loud i say— wow, we are all in motion right now, & i am comforted by constant change in this incomparable moment that will never happen again & yet concurrently exists forever. i feel the ancestors of this chaos of plants say to me excitedly: WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE IN SOME FORM & i say back: I AM ALL OF THIS TOO! we laugh in agreement. maybe the strangers meeting i deserve is previous iterations of myself & me right now overlaid on this space, this summer cacophony of green.

i’m overzealously adventuring on the woodland trail, & then i slip, twist, fall. my back left thigh absorbs the impact, my shorts & calf marked in wet earth the color of a regular coffee & i smile. my hand had hit a stone as i tried to break my fall & i leave a part of me here—blood & skin, my offering, my spell for summer: a life of continuous magic.

i know everything i want already exists & i just have to see it. so i see it. it’s this: wooly mountains in the distance, an abundance of lily pads sprouting under chartreuse still water, bombastic parades of insects & birds & chipmunks, deer & sturgeons & cryptids. everything wet from earlier rain sparkling in sunlight. i’m aroused by the sensation of sweat encasing my body, the way the air hits my surfaces. i rustle the brambles of my thigh hair with my palm & i giggle lovingly, tracing the strong muscle & the knobby knee, happy to have boy legs. i make sense here, i am real, & there is nothing i need to explain. i am embraced totally by the earth around me, no questions asked. i am trans/cendent inside of trans/cendence itself.

i dive into the streaming pool below the surging fountain of waterfall. i become forward movement as my body floats on the surface, taken by & given over to water. i swim to the lip of rocks the water tumbles over & climb up into a crevice, my little rock-seat jacuzzi. the water pounds the tension lovingly out of my neck & shoulders, cascading wildly over my face. so much oxygen in my lungs, i hear nothing but the unruly rhythm of water on rocks, on me, over us, telling me secrets. the message isn’t in words, it’s the energetic experience. home.

i’m right here, i’m “alone,” & i grow sad: the thrill & the hurting, i know that this will never be mine. it’s this moment of flawless oneness i can’t hold onto between this, the real world, and “the Real World:” the continuous forced eradication of freedoms, our bodies’ functions being owned by work, imaginary borders, courts. how all of this impinges on the ways we know how to live, how to love each other. & so we drift & fall apart. i’ll take in this hour & then it will be gone. “the Real World” assaulting back in. but this is where i want to be. in this position of wonder, i know me, i know everything. my eyes to the heavens, a stray spotlight of sun anointing my face through a patch of openness in the trees’ blanketing canopy—me, like this… if someone were to behold in this moment—they’d fall in love.

About the author

rex renée (aka rexylafemme) is a trans multi-gendered, multi-genre actor, writer, visual artist, performer, organizer, and healer from jackson heights, nyc. rexy’s work is a love letter to nyc and radical communities grounded in a politics of resistance, healing, and resilience. in all of rex’s creative forms, he explores the power of revolutionary love in the face of loveless political structures. he is also a healing practitioner and offers workshops and spiritual mentorship in building intuition with a focus on healing as a revolutionary practice. rexy’s book of poems and illustrations, when there is no one and there is everyone is available from Magic Helicopter Press. they trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, were a 2017 EmergeNYC Performance Fellow with the Hemispheric Institute at NYU, has an MFA in poetry from Mills College, and a BA in gender studies and creative writing from Warren Wilson College. find him online at www.rexylafemme.com, rexylafemme.substack.com, & @rexylafemme on instagram.