Fade.
I'll fade away from your memory.

Don't worry.
You barely even remember me now.

Billions of women
Have known how to prepare a steak.

Libraries of recipes,
A deep glut
Tucked neatly into ancient scrapbooks
Boasting of delicate marinates, spells and
Sleight-of-hand saucery

Like witches hunched over a cauldron
Stirring,
Kneading with the same spoon
That their grandmothers fashioned.

Taste,
True taste, is a subtle dance
Between giving one’s all
(Every fiber, every ingredient)
And knowing the appropriate spice
Ever-proven to suffice
By meticulous, observable
Experimentation.

Billions of women
Have had remarkable taste,
Memorialized and passed down in a scrapbook
Tucked under the cupboard.

There is but one of these
I cared to read.
But it is covered in dirt,
Encased in marble,
And nowhere near the cupboard.

The night air
prompted me
to act upon
my true inhibitions
versus
putting them to sleep
and oh the wonders
that the wishing
stars
foresaw

in a world
split into
groups of
two, what
and how and

                                 where
do I belong?
In the gender
binary, I feel
placeless. Not
quite sure if I

                                 will
ever belong
anywhere.
People say that
I am stuck
a woman, that

                                 I
will never be
a real man.
That when
I finally meet
my “well-deserved”

                                end
I will go to
the bad side
of the binary
of the afterlife.
They say I’ll end

                                 up
in Hell, just
for being me.

My pen just won’t translate clichés
For one reason or another.
It would rather ****** the page
Than aid in the smothering
Of youth, bridge the gap of old age,
Take mass graves and cover them, and
Would rather fade into disgrace
Than find a remedy to the blubbering.

Because this pen was not designed
To draw rainbows from hurricanes,
It would rather commit every crime
Than sketch new hues to the stain glass
Windows of anarchy and rhyme;
Rather commit arson daily

Than dig up the past for all to see
But none to find.
And one day soon you will race past the
Apple Store with its blaring screens,
The calamity of another mise en scéne
With nothing new to say but alas,
You can always find my pen in dreams
That make burning sense
Before they come to pass.

they say that
you can fall in
love or lust.
I can love but

                                  I can’t
fall into lust.
I don’t want to
and I don’t feel
such things. I
do feel love, and
I will never

                                   forget
the first time
I fell in love.
It wasn’t a
him like I was
told it should
be. It was

                                  her
and it was
something
beautiful, just
like she was.
Her face remains
in my memory,
and I’ll never
forget what her

                                  touch
felt like, even
though I’ll never
feel it again.

in my struggles
for acceptance,
I seek someone
to love me for
who I am. Is it

                                     parents?
Friends? or
am I destined
to a life born
of struggle and
pain? Is it that

                                     or
will I someday
get a real
community all
for me and for
other people
like me?

                                      Are they
people that
even exist? I
know it won’t
be my parents.
They don’t give
love, they’re
more like

                                      jailors.
They confine
me to my body,
to my brain and
to my pains.