They called us names on the playground.

We were small. Cherubim-faced terrors with bruised knees and perpetually greasy hair.

We dreamed of our lives after college. After our first cars. Our first houses. Our first jobs. Imaginary model wives and spoiled children. The All-American Daydream.

We didn't know what college was. We could barely see over the dashboard on Auntie's old Cadillac.

We grew up.

You became a man. Good-looking, strong, covered in tattoos. Scars on your chest and scars in your head because they called us names on the playground and those curses stuck with you.

Through every needle, every pill and every doctor's visit.

It was worth the pain, you said.

You'd do it all again, you said.

Live through the taunts. Live through the nights spent screaming up at the sky and asking God why He made you that way. Why He didn't make you a he and gave you ******* and hips instead.

They called you names on the playground. They called you something that you never were and never wanted to be.

Now we've outgrown the passing fancies of shiny trucks and four-bedroom houses in quiet suburbia.

Given up a life of apple pie to live between paychecks in a ****** Brooklyn apartment.

You're happy, now.

Happier than you ever were when they called you girl as if that were an insult.

As if they didn't understand the contempt they parroted; spat, hate.

They called you a name.

Then you changed it.

Became it.

Then your name set you free.