"Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, I'm just tired is all. I've been working a lot. "

"You sound more than tired.. You sound defeated.."

A
        ghost, ghoul and demon
live where my
        trust,love and happiness
used to be, their names are
        past,present and future.

Extra lessons after school
Explaining how you are not yourself
Such small words used so simply
Cut like knives through your chest
'She'

Paraphrasing arguments
Summarizing discipline
Faceless family with too much on their own plate to understand
Why you don't like what's on yours
'She'

Tightness in your chest not because your binding is too small
But because it isn't
The name of a state has never hurt so much
'She'

You look in the mirror and grimace
Shower so fast you don't have to see yourself
Roll their words in your mind until you're leaning over the toilet
'She'

Humming summer days fade into early autumn nights
Long days enforce what they have already told you
Dress code laws repeated by tongue
And hasty dressing in changing rooms
Hoping they won't notice you
'She'

But you are an active volcano
There are wolves in your chest and lions in your brain
And they can't change you
You get home and look in the mirror and sign into skype
A simple word that only drops one letter
Has never had so much power

He.

I've been painted pink the instant the doctors
Wiped me of red.
I looked like the boys I knew - our differences a
Color palette provided by Mommy and Daddy.
I was their little girl, their princess who wished
Her hair would stop growing,
Lest she be locked in a stone tower.
I didn't mind the dress so much then,
Not when it was the only difference between me
And them.

Magic mirror before me, is wrong all I'll ever be?
I shut my eyes, unable to stand my body bare.
My knight, your skin simply is not right.
I've read the mirror never lies.

Mommy and Daddy are yelling
About my butch haircut.
Our little girl the ****, they say.
I did it myself.
Mommy still buys me dresses,
Daddy tells her to spend the money on
Therapy instead.
Daddy asks about boyfriends,
Mommy tells him I don't have any because I
Hide my *******.
I tell them I'm all wrong.
They agree.
We're talking about two different things.

I don't change for gym anymore.
The girls are secretly relieved I won't be there
To cast a wandering eye in their soft bodies.
I'm relieved I won't be in the wrong locker room.

Mommy and Daddy don't like me
Telling them who I am.
I've finally found my way out of the tower and
The king and queen are upset because their
Princess never made it home, just the knight.
My little girl, Mommy cries.
I follow the point of Daddy's finger to the door
Until I'm on a bus bound for somewhere else.

I shift from Pangea into separate pieces.
Finally I have space to breathe.
Needles, knives, pills bend my body to my will -
It took Michelangelo three years to build David.

Mommy and Daddy believe me to be
A delivery man. They are expecting to sign off
On a television set, yet when they see me
Idle in the doorframe there is a hesitance, a hope.
But most of all there is silence.
Mommy cannot speak, her hand curls like a gasp
Around her mouth.
Daddy begins to cry, his eyes pale and blue.
I am hugged.
They don't say sorry, but I hear then whisper.
My little boy, they say. My little boy.