I.
An unending desire to relinquish power
must be handled with care.

My voice
Was the highest soprano in the choir
And I was well past puberty.
My chest may never be
As flat as yours,
My shoulders will always be
Slimmer and daintier,
My waist tucks in and allows for
Hips,
Hips that make me cringe with every ******* breath
Some days.

I will never have
That bulge between my legs
That you so wrongly call manhood.

I lack the things you tell me
Make someone a boy,
And sometimes I even lack the guts
To disagree with you;
But **** if that makes it alright to throw me in gutters,
Beat me up behind smokey dive bars,
Yell at me on the city bus,
Take away my ******* humanity.

Because I am a boy.
I am a ******* human.

I.
You bleed in places boys are never meant to bleed;
You want to make yourself bleed in more places because of it.

II.
There will be places on your body that are no longer for touching.
They mean nothing to you, but the nerve-endings interaction with another hand will let you know they’re real.
They cannot be real.

III.
You will hear love songs, and you will want to rip your own lungs out in your fist.
They give you enough trouble anyways.

IV.
You never do rip your lungs out.
You cannot fit your fingers down your throat, and your ribs are too strong for your too small hands to break.
You cough when it’s cold out and laughing has hurt for months.

V.
You tell people that you reach out to them when you need to.
You reach out to them on good days.
You do not tell them that the days on which you cannot even form the words to ask for their help are they days you need it, and you do not expect them to know this.

VI.
You talk about escaping like it’s going to fix things.
You think about escaping as though it means ripping open your skin and walking away from it.

VII.
You think about what is wrong with you and you conclude you are unlovable.
The statement is not untrue.
You will hold up your own broken bones as proof.

VIII.
You sit in the bath for three hours and you look at yourself and you look at the ceiling.
You do not punch the walls anymore; it was loud and someone asked about the slamming.

IX.
You put your own hands around your neck for hours but you never tighten them.
You do not want to be disappointed in their lack of strength.

X.
There will be fingernail marks across your chest for a few days.
You will not see them, no one will see them.
No one wants to see that, and you cannot bear to look.

I.
No one writes poetry about you. You are
an enigma, you are an enigma of unreality and
displeasing angles, too many
bones inside a shell covered with marks you
put there yourself on the best of days on the
worst of days the days you
can't remember.

II.
You watched a Swedish film once called
"Boys" and you think about it often because when
they said the word "homosexual" it was subtitled as
"******", and when they said the word "transgender", the subtitles
said "******".  You are like those subtitles
in your own head, over and
over.

III.
You'll make a film someday and you will
yell the word ****** from an overpass, and you preface it
with "I am a", and you will make it
poetry.

I.
You were the blood between my legs an idol a
nightmare a meltdown a
moment between breathing & reaching for an inhaler that you never
put into my hand.

II.
You are the blood between my legs you are still
the hands I think of every time I cannot stop it but I know it's
natural & I know it's meant to be that way
most months.

III.
You are the blood between my legs both the scars it comes from and
the place it falls from the way it should if I were to
remain a girl.

IV.
You will be the blood between my legs the reason I ruin every
pair of underwear I own the reason I cannot use
a more effective method of mopping it up the reason I'm
startled every morning you are the fingernails that did it
you are what I think of you are vicious femininity you are
every kind of trauma every kind of torture you are
the reason I cannot stop being afraid of blood.

V.
You are all over me. You are hands down a skirt that I
do not want to be wearing you are hands up a dress that I never
wanted to put on you are hands across a chest that I want
to mutilate you are hands hands hands and you are
too sharp too fast too forceful and I am looking at the blood
between my legs and you are that and yet you never
let it touch you
nor did you help me clean it up.

I.
My hands are shaky with a scalpel.
Someday I may cut out my own ovaries at the cost of blood.

II.
You aren't meant to worry about me.
I'm one of the boys you look will at later, and say "What a tragedy."

III.
Don't worry now, I'm not a **** statistic yet.
Don't protect me, I'm not a court case yet.

IV.
I'm still fighting ain't I, right?
I'm not here for helping.

To be sure, it's unconventional;
Seems as though loving someone ought to have boundaries --
"Kissing means romance"
"Saying 'I love you' means commitment"
"Sleeping together means - "
But what does that ******* mean?
Nothing more, just sleeping.
So safe it felt like I could breathe.

To tell someone, "I slept the night,
better then I ever have,
my head on his chest and wrapped in the warmest arms."
They'll assure me it's a love affair.
How can I defend against -- that --
When I'm not even sure, really, if they're right.

I've been in love (or so I thought) before.
It felt different but who's to say that wasn't the abuse.
Thought loving someone, romantically and proper, meant hurting.
Yearning, confusing, burning, the occasional glorious moment
When they let you come close enough to touch
Fingertips.
Thought it was about putting up with pain because
they were worth it.

But the way I feel now isn't like
Hurting myself to make them happy or okay --
In fact, it's just the opposite.
I'm a better person, safer in my own skin, happier;
I want to live with you and sleep with you and hold your hands
But I never want to kiss you more than a peck upon the forehead.

January

You make puns.
I make puns back.
We laugh.

February

I learn your name.
You walk me to class.

March

We keep making puns.
I tell you I don't go by the name I was introduced as.
You nod.

April

You punch me in the arm, harder than intended.
It's a funny thing to feel safe about.

May

You get my number.
We send each other jokes sometimes.
We talk about queer issues on occasion.

June

We beat each other up, laughing.
My ribs are bruised for a week and a half.
Our self-destructive tendencies seem to fall asleep for longer.

July

I am away.
I text you every day, and I don't remember when it started.
We agree that we are vaguely incompatible.

August

We begin school, and I see you every day.
I'm happier.
You look happier, too.

September

I ask your pronouns.
You touch me without hurting me for the first time.

October

Sometimes we fall asleep holding each other.
I'll never be in love with you.

November

Commitment has never felt like freedom before.

December*

You taste like some kind of holy water, a first sip of communion;
And I will still never be in love.

YOU WERE A YEAR OF WHATEVER YOU WERE A YEAR OF
a year i could have stayed inside forever

YOU WERE THE FUEL TO MY FIRE YOU WERE THE WOOD THAT
only ever made me burn higher

YOU WERE THE GRIND ON THE DANCE FLOOR THE ONE NIGHT
in heaven the one night i didn't think about her not once i was alright

YOU WERE THE SHARED CLOTHES SO QUICKLY FORGOTTEN
on my floor, do you still want them back, i've stopped sleeping with them

YOU WERE THE DRESS PULLED TOO TIGHTLY THE SHIRT
pulled right off i let you see something no one else had with my permission

YOU WERE THE PILLS DOWNED AT MIDNIGHT THE LAST
glass of ***, shared & burning; turning into the rack where my fears are hung

YOU WERE MY EARLY FALL YOU WERE MY
you were my early fall.

We are growing up wrong --
Let me rephrase,
There is nothing wrong with the way in which we are growing up.
We are wrong.

We are becoming whispered secrets behind closed doors --
the information with which to bind safely, advice on a name --
Quickly passed off goods as though it were illegal to
Own a binder, a packer, a mens tie.

We are becoming men,
And yet we were never boys, not really.
Not in the way we would have liked to be.

We will be fighting the rest of our lives,
Lying, probably. Lying, when it doesn't feel like lying --
"When I was a, well, a boy scout.." But you weren't.
You were a girl scout.

We are covering our tracks to hide the identity we've worked so hard to obtain --
No one but each other will ever be proud of us.
Not for this.
Not for the hardest fight of our lives.

Hell is relative.

It's a disambiguation of the horrors and
disintegration of the self.
A destruction of the knowledge and
delineation of the time.

"I will see you in hell",
has always struck me as a funny sentiment.
No two hells shall be the same.

I.
You will never be sure of the correct manner in which to exist and you
will stumble over every line every
time you open your mouth and your
mumbles are honey.

II.
You are never quite right about what is expected of you and you
are always convinced someone is being hurt because you've
gone and done them wrong and yet you have done more
right by me than anyone I have ever known.

III.
It's alright you're falling into my arms you're falling into my
arms you're not falling apart.

I.
There is nothing wrong with you the way you,
talk the way you do the way you,
hold too tightly before you fall sleep when you,
are up against me there is nothing wrong with,
me.

I.
There has been a death,
a sickness,
a love affair,
a calamity,
a journey.

II.
You are none the better
but you are none
the worse.

III.
You start missing them,
finally,
when you are driving home one day.

IV.
You made a lot of jokes about this.
More than were appropriate - all of you
did.
It was the best you could do
when it happened when everything
happened and now you are
still laughing at the ghost of things you all said
two months ago when it was as though the door
would still open.

V.
You live in that room now.

VI.
You live in that room and it doesn't even smell like him anymore.

VII.
You don't feel guilt. You feel guilt about a lot of things but not about
this.
This was not your fault, this was no one's fault and
you know it.
You all know it.

VIII.
Sometimes you find it very ironic that you
are still alive.
You wonder if he ever considered, in the six months before,
the idea what one step eleven stories up would determine
not only the loss but several people's
unwillingness to die.

X.
The joke you made was that killing yourself is no longer original.

I.
You never wrote a break up poem for your first love.
You never fell in love again & you never will.

II.
You never had a break up to write about with your second love.
It was slow, soft, a gentle falling apart, an easy descent into
whatever this is, whatever it means that you don't
acknowledge their eyes anymore you pretend you never
hear it when they laugh.

III.
You haven't talked in weeks but it's hitting you now;
someone who held you down on bed springs, someone who
held you in their arms at all.

IV.
You're mourning a death of
months ago.

I.
You don't use the word ****.
It's overly strong, you don't deserve validation like that.

II.
You talk about hands a lot.
There is not much else to talk about.

III.
You want to talk about surroundings,
but there are several different scenarios in which it happened,
and
you are not sure if it was multiple times
or a faulty memory.

IV.
You try hard not to talk about names.
You're supposed to know that, want some kind of vengeance or something;
you have two or three good guesses.
Hands feel like hands , faulty memory looks & sounds like
the smoke in the summer time when the wildfires
grow large enough to keep you inside for days on end.

V.
It isn't enough to go on.
You do not call it anything aside from
"I have trauma".
Trauma could mean anything; it is beautifully vague.
Maybe someone hit you (maybe they really did, sometimes
you almost remember it).
Maybe it was worse than that or maybe it was a book you read,
over & over & over & over.

VI.
You are over & over & over & over
and you wish you were over & you wish it was over.
You don't use the word ****. Over & over & over & over,
you don't have it in you to use the word ****.