Often he feels as if he killed her. she was a daughter, a sister, niece, granddaughter, Aunt and a girlfriend.
No longer is she any of those things because she became him.
Now he is a son, brother, nephew, grandson, uncle and boyfriend.
She left behind a life for him, a life he now lives.
He lived inside her for too long and now he is free but many still see him as he used to be.
They see him as her but he is not her, he is just him.
So now he feels trapped, how could he explain that he is not her?
It's like her stole her life and who she used to be, which leads him to often believe that he killed her.

Your fingers pull at shower-soft hair
Getting longer but not too long
Your eyes are dry but so is your tongue
Because you can’t find it in you to cry

Your chest is tight but it’s not the shirt you wear
It’s your ribs closing in on your lungs.
Your insides are crushed beneath the weight of their words
Pronouns buried like landmines beneath your skin
There’s a sickness inside you
Gnawing on your bones
Black tar sticky in your stomach
A violence pressing against your organs

You’ll feel better when you’ve changed your body
When your voice is deep and there’s hair on your jaw
You can take your shirt off at the beach
And flirt with girls at the coffee shop

Until then there’s no one who can understand
No one to get why you stand before the mirror
Running your hands over your flattened chest
Or practice walking like there’s something between your legs

No one asks why you’re not happy with cancer
Because no one is happy with cancer
But no one understands that your dysphoria
Is a sickness
And its terminal

I saw someone, two grades older than me in the halls with a purple shirt.
He was tall and had a huge grin and a loud laugh.
I heard the boy in the purple shirt had an B in Spanish
And a D in chemistry
And an A in foreplay.
I thought maybe he's had more than one girlfriend in the past few weeks.
At school he tells me he likes my shirt. Then turns around and tells another girl he likes her ***.
I realized then I wanted to be him. Because the girl was probably going to **** him, and not me.
What does he have that I don't.
Chin fuzz, a reverberating voice, broad shoulders, a ****.
That night I did one hundred push ups. That night I cried for one hundred minutes.
And slept for what seemed like one hundred hours.
When my morning comes my chest aches. When my morning comes my chest is still chesty.
When his morning comes his chest is occupied by a girl's head.
When his morning comes he let's go of a morning *** on his purple shirt.
On his purple sheets.
On the girl's purple cheeks.
He remembers someone, she is two grades younger than him.
She is small and has sad lips and a quiet sigh.
She has an F in math, and an F in history, and an F in foreplay.
He told her he liked her shirt, because he really did, because it wasn't purple, because it wasn't his, because it made her look strong. It made her look like a man. He then realized that he liked the color blue better, and liked the way it looked on her.

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.

December 17th 1998 the doctors say "congratulations, it's a girl"
I do not know what I am

5 years old I am at preschool
I ask "why don't they wear dresses?" pointing to the boys I get an answer that boys don't wear dresses
I don't want to wear dresses, can I be a boy?

Elementary school the boys play football and tag at recess, the girls talk about the cute boys, their hair and their outfits.
I want to play football with the boys but I sit alone on the swings watching the boys.
I wish I were a boy

Middle school the girls are wearing bras and the boys are getting deeper voices. My voice doesn't get deeper but my chest grows, I try to push it back but it doesn't work. My sister want to put makeup on me and have me dress in girly clothes.
But I feel like a boy stuck as a girl

Highschool I learn the word transgender. I cry because I'm not alone. I find out about binders and order one. It comes it the mail, I put it on and put on my most masculine clothes. I already have short hair but I put on a beanie. I look like a boy. I feel like a boy.
I am a boy

The name my mother gave me is not mine. Phoenix sounds right for me. A new beginning, a new life. I will make a boy out of this body.

I'm 15 and scared to tell my family. Over the years in my head I know I am a boy but my body tells me differently. I tell my family that I am a boy. I'm scared and they don't say anything about it. Maybe they think if they don't say anything it will go away. But I am a boy

I tell my teachers and they call me he instead of she. I feel like me. Other students call me a girl but can't they see I am a boy

I go to a store and get called sir, they see me as a boy, I look in the mirror and finally see me.

A boy

He was never your daughter,
not since the day he was born.
He was an identical twin to his sister, sure,
but your daughter? No.

I am dating your daughter, sir.
He has an assortment of ways to please me.
I love him, and he knows it;
he orders his ***** online to please me.

He was never your daughter.
Couldn't you tell from the way he looked
awkward in dresses?
The way he always cut his hair short?

He was never your daughter;
I am dating your daughter, sir;
but he is not, never was, a sister
to the brother who just wanted a hug.

"She feels like she's wearing the wrong decoration;
how would you like it if I put you
in a dress and paraded you around
in front of your friends?"

He was never your daughter, ma'am,
but you knew it.
He is not a lesbian, he's something different.
He is not your daughter, any more.

Certainly we all know
he wears things to hide his *******.
And while I know what's down there in his pants
he won't let me see it.

He was never your daughter,
but I knew that.
I knew when he said, "FtM,"
that he was something different,

something special.

"I want to be a pelican
and have a bag for a face."
"Baby, baby, baby."
"Where's my ****?"

I've spent a month with your daughter,
and he cannot wait to tell it to your face
that he's moving out.

No I'm not depressed because I'm fat.
No I'm not depressed because I'm being bullied.
No I'm not depressed because I didn't get what I wanted.
But I am depressed but only because of the simple fact that the person I want to be and the person I am are two different genders.
No one wants to help a transgender child.
No one cares if we have feelings or not.
No one understands that the wrong pronouns can upset us.

But when they do...its too late.