escape room

May 28

Written By Woods

"There’s something that happens", no one said, “when you think nothing else is possible. You shut down. That’s it. It’s, like, the power goes out. Except, the generator turns on and starts performing ‘essential functions.’ But you didn’t program in the essential functions, someone else did. Someone else did the math. Someone else did the coding.”

i never

saw my

life after

a projector

stopped

the screen

went blank

my mind

is made

of pictures

i’ve written

so many

songs

about 27,

about how i

never thought

i’d make it

past then

but here

i am

i just realized today

that when i planned

out my life, 27 was

when i’d have 2 kids

and be a wife…
to a cis man

somehow, deep down,

i knew

i never

put it

together,

breaking

up with

forever

and i

have

been

estranged

but something

inside me

has changed

It had been about two years since I shaved my head.

I was curious about what it would feel like to have hair again, so I bought a long, dirty blonde wig. The hair, styled with bangs and scattered with platinum blonde highlights, was wavy and dynamic. It captured how my lifelong hairstyle might’ve looked on its best day. I put it on, not knowing where to fasten the pins since I had no hair for them to grasp onto, and looked in the mirror. Instant, full-body friction. I sighed, feeling uncomfortable and confused, and said, “I feel like I’m in drag?”

svesti la giubba (2024)
just a story
about an emperor who didn’t want an empire
who always had to paint on their smiles
and dance around in desecrated drag
while the audience clapped and laughed
i always loved the stage but i never made it
past the door, people always took their masks off
and i didn’t know what for

After that, I continued trying on wig after wig - short, long, blonde, silver, brunette, pink, wavy, straight - searching for…something. At last, I felt it. Euphoria. The long, straight, black-and-white plaited wig was the exact hair I would have loved as a kid, listening to emo and punk music in the half of the parking lot the girls were allowed to play in at recess.

Honestly, I thought I had arrived. I thought I had finally found the truest version of myself; after a long and arduous journey, I had summited my personal mountain of femininity and was ready to plant my flag.

the set up (c. 2008, age 16, c. wade)

The forest,
stale and cragged,
stifles me,
hindering my ambitions.
I stumble through
the dense vegetation
attempting to pursue
previously failed goals.
Though these paths
should be familiar,
I fail to recall
the right one to take.
The trees,
made of stiff bark,
seem to threaten me,
and I start running.
My eyes close,
and for a minute,
I am flying.
This ends quickly.
An unearthed root
steps in my path,
and I fall,
slivering my face on broken twigs.
The paths are deceiving,
and in their trickery,
they mock me.
They laugh,
their branches
seemingly pointing out
my insecurities.
And then,
I see a break
in the cover of
the menacing trees.
This sight,
in contrast of my path
was familiar;
I’d been there many a time.
A mountain
towers over me.
The journey before
lost in time.
A deep breath
that grasps the inner core of my body
steadies me,
and I begin to climb.
A ceaseless stream
of sunlight
radiates above.
The handholds,
though close in reach,
are far,
far away in sight.
My hand gropes
for a familiar grip,
to anchor
what seem to be
the last pieces of my strength.
I use all of my ability
to cajole the earth
into reluctant cooperation.
It abides,
propelling me upwards,
completing my journey.
Success.

I now know I was attempting to play with my own personal archetype of femininity - the one I had curated, costumed, and performed for decades - one last time. But, what I didn’t realize was this archetype was a blueprint. It was a stock character.

The mountain’s pinnacle was, ultimately, only a single point.

If I stood there, on my mark, if I walked back to that x taped onto the stage to the sound of someone shouting, “Places!,” I would never be able to move again. And the point really only fit one foot. I would be in an arabesque penchée for the rest of my existence, trying and forever failing to turn myself into the plot line I was never scripted to breathe in anyway. An x-axis without a why. A princess never allowed to put her foot down without Prince Charming returning that damn glass slipper.

The fool’s cliff was at the center of the stage - the one that had been built for only half of me to perform on.

It was magic - the “death saw” trick No One Else witnessed. Every One Else seemed fine performing their roles, even when they would play mine. They could do the blocking. They could dance. They didn’t trip over the peak of the mountain jutting out of the floorboards.

choreographies of gender (2024, woods)
how do i embody
masculinity?
i was only taught
the choreographies
of femininity
i was only taught
to dance
correctly
no wonder
my body
needed
so much
correcting

I was disciplined. I was correct. And for the life of me, or to the life of me, I could not connect.

All I could do was literally nail the choreography. Nail the high notes. Nail the performance. So I got a hammer and nails, conveniently sitting in the props closet, and I fucking nailed them. Each nail, hammered into the pine, like a pin drop into a location called Silence. No One saw it. No One felt it. No One tripped. No One fell. No One was ready to stop performing.

Eventually, there were frames. I started to clip my shoulders on them as I sang, but kept following the choreography. Then there were the walls with glass. I would run into them and fall down.

buying out (2025, woods)
i’ve been running into walls
feels like all i do is fall
but not to pieces
no each time i end up on the ground,
i’m more lost than i’ve been found
but i don’t mind being lost
but, you see, the thing is, there’s a cost
is there a cost?
maybe, and maybe not
i always thought it meant
something about me
that i couldn’t do the things - oop -
couldn’t do the things others could easily
but i don’t mind trying
and trying again -
and trying again
i’ve come to value
my ability to fall,
even my ability
to run into walls
but i’d rather that
not be the only way
i feel things [sighs]
and it’s just called, like,
full contact sport [laughs, groans]
connecting with yourself and
your body is like a full contact sport

Then there was the electric wire.

hurts/hertz (2025, woods)
why does it feel like i’m dying when i feel
why does it hurt even more when i’m closer -
no that’s too many words
why does it feel like i’m dying when i feel
why is it the closer i get to anything real
i hurt more
i feel pain
i thought healing meant things got better
i thought working on yourself meant
you know which letters to type
which words to say
but now i have none
and it feels like
it’ll forever stay
that way
and maybe forever’s just a day away
or - maybe forever’s just a thing people say
maybe better is just a thing that people say

It’s like the nail was a seed and my tears were its water. I kept running into everything. Feeling everything.

It dawned on me that there was No Where Else for me to go with the role. In that moment, the exit light turned on and the spotlight turned off.

I couldn’t feel any of this in my body, but I wasn’t ready to stop performing. Or maybe I was. I just didn’t know how. No One led me to the door.

well i am done

trying to convince

Everyone

That i honestly just

Want to live

I want to live

for the first time

in my life

But i am being forced inside

while everyone carries around

their gaslight to keep me in line

i am so angry

but anger isn’t something

i was taught to know

so i sit here,

feeling like

a melted

ice cream

cone;

i try

to understand

what my body

is saying

but it gets

lost

in translation

and i am

lost

pain

unable

to see

the forest

through

the trees

or the trees

through the

forest

hauntelegy (2026, woods)

people leave notes
people leave traces
people leave maps

they teach us
to erase this

people leave notes
people leave maps

i guess i’m people
too

Woods