the floor digging into curves
i did not know by body had
with my body curving absurd
my hands full of realization
that my shapes are awry
off-the-mark

my legs sit ahead
lax tired filled with exhaustion
of not enough miles walked
enough sitting around day
to day and working on
support of my sitting body

i feel sorry to have taken
away their purpose
a life should be better
lived but it's owner
weary and filled
with excuses

works day and night
on sitting or sleeping
not doing much but
just a floater
focused on
a sky always cloudy

a pathetic soul
one of many
just a sad sad soul
in its generalizing
with the many
and the soul has no
shine

but hit escape
life has its
own rhythm and groove

but the groove that once
made itself known
seeps into the silence of
trees, nights, stars
rarely seen

words barely written
unartistic
unassuming
arbitrary
uninteresting
invisible

­screaming heart
quietens under
burden of
weightlessness
of existence

-

#1
*******, i am really drunk
accidentally slammed three beers
pretending that the neck of the bottle
was your lips

#2
part of me wanted to text you
staring up into the sky
praying that the stars would swallow me
and my fingers itched to type out
so many things that i would regret
in the morning

#3
and i imagined telling you
confessions of how i felt
and i imagined that little cursor
blinking back at me like so much
apathy and words swallowed
over and again

#4
and i have kissed
my fair share of people
with lips male and female
with faces smooth and some scruff
or a full beard that i envied
but girls have the softest lips
always have

#5
i wondered what it would be like
to kiss you then
holding your body to mine
hoping you would forgive the splits
in my lip that anxiety helped me put there

#6
a good describing word for how
i felt then with three beers and good food
making its home in my belly
would be “blissed”
i was blissed out on ***** and food
and my pining for you

#7
i am sober now
woke up earlier than i would have liked
but then again i fell asleep at 10:30pm

#8
and this thing i feel
it’s like a combination of regret
and disappointment in myself
for not just telling you how i feel
and for needing liquid courage
to get myself to that plateau
of spilling my guts or backing away

#9
and i have forgotten
what my favorite drink tastes like again
in favor of the words to describe
how kissing you for the first time
would surely feel

#10
and i have never felt fireworks
when kissing someone before
even the girl i thought i was gonna marry
and i’m not so young now
and a little bit more cynical
but i wanna feel those fireworks with you
and i still haven’t texted you
and i don’t know if i will
and i don’t know if i should
and i am sorry for being like this

time was spent
writing and in that
I thought
it's been a while



I was counting down the years
looking at my fingers
two hands not enough to contain
all of it



a palm full of life
two palms full of life
three... and
(well, I'd reverse or continue
but my age
should remain a secret)

but after so many handfuls
there were some more
maybe too many
maybe not much or perhaps
were there any?



some palmfuls of life
and I realize
that maybe I need to
be a little kinder



looking past the now
remaining stuck in fear
fear of what may come
what may be said



I realize that is not good
not healthy
and I wish that above all else
I regain my strength to live
as fully as I wish
as fully as I want to be remembered



but it is hard
and I know it takes time patience skill
to bring everything I have
up to the standard I want to reach



so I stay clustered in my room
preparing myself
rejuvenating myself
re-motivating myself
to try
be better than who I am



apparently motivation is like showering
so it's something that needs to be pursued
not done once and forgotten forever

i feel scared, love
my heart hurts
love
i want to clamber into your lap,
love
the way i never did when i was two
i want to sit in your pool of warmth
and be drowned by the rough timbre of your voice
as i count down my fears and cry
because love
i am so terrified

but this world does not look familiar
and i
i'm losing sight
drowning
d r o w n i n g
in this ocean of work
a cross between my shoulder blades

a memory at my lips
scars along my wrists
i am so scared my love

and i find myself mumbling numbers
i should not
talking about deals
talking
c r a z y,
love

i am scared
and i cannot clamber into your lap
because i am no longer two
and i do not have love, love

when you first look at me
and i mean more than a furtive passing glance
what do you see?
and i only ask because i have read
that employers have this thing where
they will analyze a hopeful-hire
in 30 seconds
and then they go off of that
mere 30, 29, 28
and so on
all the way down to 0
of whether or not they will get the job

now i am not asking you for a job
because i do not want to work for you
and you are not offering me a position
as caretaker, worker, cleaner, lover
and even if you were
it would not be accurate
because i am so much more than
30 seconds

because in such a short amount of time
that only allows a quick once-over
all that you will come away with
is a mix of stereotypes and an impression
based off of what gender you think i am

30, 29, 28
purple haired freak, clown, butch
27, 26, 25
girl, must be a lesbian, what a ****
24, 23, 22
must have been a cutter at some point
maybe still is, but who can really say?
because the world we live in is getting colder
and hotter and colder and layers upon layers
is the only way to go
21, 20, 19
is she a girl or a boy? who does she think she is?
what should i call her?
18, 17, 16
she she she
15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
0, 0, 0,
girl girl girl

(now let me tell you what
i gleaned from the 30 seconds that
you looked me up and down
like i was nothing more than a slab
of meat and you wanted to
dig a knife into my and cut me into little chunks

what i saw in your eyes
it was not nice
and i saw the moment when you
labeled me as a female
because of my *******
soft and supple and right ******* there
and the societally stereotyped feminine pear shape of my hips
all the way down to where there is no bulge
because how can she be a ******
when she hasn’t got any bottom dysphoria, huh?

and sure that’s a great question
it’s so clever and original
why can’t you just be a tomboy?
why can’t you just be a lesbian?
why not try being bisexual?
but really the question
the million dollar question
is why can’t you just be a girl?

well because i’m not a girl
and i have known this
since i was 7 years old
and that was ******* terrifying
because i knew for a fact that
i was something else than the doctor
had labeled me as after glancing at
my new born baby self
and thinking: yup, ******=female

and i tried being a tomboy
wearing ripped jeans and converse
and keeping my hair short
wearing baggy sweatshirts to hide
my *******
but it wasn’t enough

and i tried being a lesbian
actually since i did not know what
transgender meant
let alone that there was a word to describe
what i had felt like inside for
9 long **** years
i rationalized that i must have been a lesbian
because that was a quick-fix-easy-answer
to the cuts on my wrist and the misery
i felt whenever someone called me a girl

and i tried being bisexual
which came after a lesbian
and before transgender
and yeah sure i guess it worked
but not for long
and then it happened and i knew what
transgender meant and that
i wasn’t a tomboy
a lesbian
or even bisexual

and i tried being a girl
but it very nearly killed me
and then it happened
and i knew who and what i was

i am a transgender male
my sexuality is pansexual
and no i do not have *** with pans
though that’s really original and not something
i’ve heard so many times already

but i know that i am not a woman
and your 30 second analysis of me
does not help you at all
because you see me through a lens
of female, butch, lesbian, she, she, she
and that is not who i am at all)

in the early morning hum,
in the beat of the drum of the white noise and the misplaced light, i
treasure you.
the sole familiar thing.

an old, cloying taste
clings to my mouth.
i think you are sleeping.
i know? you are sleeping.
i awoke to silence filled by your silence.
i know you are sleeping;
i felt loved by your silence, still.

i know this is love i imagine for myself in the ways i need it most;
i know how this goes.

in the early morning hum,
in the beat of the drum of the white noise and the misplaced light,
i allow myself to feel a very real fear that you
will be everything i needed
and almost everything i want.

and so in preparation,
a separation:
i shift and twitch and shiver until i am at once here
and not,
until i am at once here
and in the moment,
some way down the line,
that old, cloying taste magnified,
when all comes to pass as i knew it would and i can say
“i knew it would.”
i know how this goes.

you take the morning bus to secaucus,
and i, the one to new york.
when sleep greets me and leans my head
gently
against the window pane,
i will let it come.
i will let it try to fill your absence
in ways i know to be short-lived, for naught,
but i will let it try.

i will miss you when i wake up,
miss the silence that i thought you crafted for me,
but which was really just
silence.
i will miss you when i wake up as i miss you when you are next to me.
i want, for us, something infinite:
that which we cannot have and which you do not want,
hard as i wish you did.

but.
the sun rises —
i know how this goes —
and the misplaced light finds its place again.
the silence i thought you crafted for me, which was really just
silence,
becomes noise.
hectic. colorful without order.
i will miss you when i wake up,
but what ache is strong enough to pull something personal
from all that noise?

you take the morning bus to secaucus,
and somewhere in new york i try to live a life as though you have already left me.
if i had my way,
hopeful, futile grasps towards the infinite would not hold ample weight for a haunting.

and yet,
that old, cloying taste.

still.

(a.m.)

Eyes closed, hands pressed, I pray to a god I can't see.
Shifting, swaying, spinning, I try to keep the beat, but I'm dancing to a broken melody.
Clock ticks, world spins but I'm living in my memories.
Where did I go wrong?
In the eyes of the child the sun shines as far as it can see.
The old knows the horizon isn't as far as it seems.
You feel the cold long before you see the dark, try as you might there is no turning back.

there are
millions
of reasons
to stay
in bed

pillows
matress
&
blankets
are a few

the way
the sun
is blocked
by curtains
is another

morning air
void
of sadness
negativity
&
pain
is another

but
there are things
that make you
get out
of it

like her
smile
voice
&
existence

She finds no skylight
or space to fly
but dips in and out
of the little door
gathering twig
and grass and snags
of blown fleece.

She circles, plaits,
hatches a nest-worth
of speckled eggs,
fills her box
on the garden wall
with crescendos
of newborn song.