‘Are you a boy or a girl?’
They shout down the corridor in a chorus behind me
Like the cries of “Good morning, Miss” in assembly
The patronising tone
in sleep deprived confusion
Droning throughout the halls
ringing around ‘she’.
    
Going to lessons is the scariest thing
Head down, walking fast hoping
they’ll never say anything
Hoping no one will question you
Glance around and notice you
not daring to look up
in case you make a wrong move.
    
You can’t know what it’s like to be
in a room all alone,
in a house that is not your own;
'Your body is a temple’ they said.
But they don’t tell you how to treat it
if it’s right in your head
but wrong in your skin,
and that feeling
of being and existing
is like dealing
with a thousand anxieties
suffocating within;
Chest too obvious
voice too loud and feminine
not enough to be ‘gentleman’.

'Why does this bother you?'
I hear you enquire,
it's because society’s construct
of gender is too based on attire,
an old fashioned concept-
Telling your children
that 'blue's for boys'
'pink's for girls'.

'Is it really?' I say.
Gender is not just binary
it fluxes and changes,
just like any scientific theory;
Einstein for instance,
didn’t come up with special relativity
in a night!
It took years of work
until he was right

Let this apply for gender too:
not just black
and white it's not as
clear cut as that
this is black and this is white
Evolve the theory
from system to spectrum
of freedom and pride
to reside in one's body happily:
Humanity allied.

This is what I dream about,
but it is not what
I've been living throughout,
in our world of shame;
where we are reduced to words and themes.
Driving my community,
those who love and support me,
to thoughts of suicide.
Being known
only when they're reduced
to rags and bones,
dead bodies
hanging
from their hashtags
thrown in the corner
another into the pile of disorder...

But people think it’s okay
to come up to you
abuse you in the street.
Knocked to your knees
to cries of 'queer'-
you end up living in fear-
'well, what do you expect given
who's watching Wall Street?'

Yet I stand here
talking to you
a queer boy-
with all connotations of the word-
a queer boy with a voice.
Look at me!
My chest,
My unbroken voice,
My broken mind.
I am not proud of what I am,
what I’ve become and
how much it hurts
is indescribable to you.
I am not what you want me to be.
I am a man.
Not trans.

When asked who and what I am
It's hard to give a ****
I answer with
Half woman half man
But also
Neither boy but an apology
Neither girl but a memory
Maybe both, but that's called false ideology
Ask when it all began
Then stop me before I even can-

Not a daughter but somehow that bothers you
It's hard to walk in porcelain shoes
Every step can mean something someone will break
Stay in the binary that's your fate
Laugh when I say I'm in between
The words in between how the color gray can mean so much,
Because it's not an issue of black or white
How the love just might-

Falling for every human
Not a color like red or blue
Grow out of the phase maybe at the end it won't be true
Given a name to make one easily identifiable
Yet after, I found myself, not so easily identifiable
We thought I'd just settle for cis hetro-normative *** and gender
But instead I'm still caught in this hell ******
Return the parts I don't want to God, aka the original sender
Scientific labels based on unseeable factors
Play the gender roles, be a good actor

If it's a disease then please shoot me with the cure,
to fix what has always left me so unsure

My body both a home and cage
Bringing Such Joy and such rage
Curves so superb to the audience eyes
Yet come and cry when the scales numbers rise
Try to fold up small go unnoticeable, then
tear it to pieces become invisible

Wear a shirt that's too tight
Wear a pants that are just right
Wear a skirt or a dress
Become a failure or a mess
Wear a loose button up sudden success

Gender is career goals
Gender is being dull
Gender is falling apart,
picking yourself up to make the art
Gender is binary
Gender is not binary
Gender is clothes
But also
Gender is making yourself containable to those
who do not care about you

Gender is a ****.
Now bear with me, I don’t mean it in a bad way
I mean it as gender is elusive
Gender is tricky
Maybe with my words I should be more picky
But that’s not the point
The point is gender is something I cannot hope to begin to understand

Maybe gender is a universe
And within it we are all stars
Or maybe gender is an ocean
Not quite the Dead Sea where everything floats
And not quite everywhere else where everything sinks
But somewhere in between
And within it we are all jellyfish trying to string together a coherent stream of consciousness that somehow makes sense

And-see?
It’s getting away from me
I used to think gender was a binary
Male, female, *****, ******
Everything coincides so we all fit into this dichotomy
But that leaves no room for Alex who is sometimes Alex and other times Cassandra
Or Sasha who is somehow both at once
Or me who lays claim to no label, because all of them throw up a red light

There is one thing I do know as fact
Pronouns are not a privilege
They are a right

They, them, their:
Singular gender nonspecific pronouns
A customer came into the store today and bought twelve packs of gum
I didn't know what was on their mind, but
Maybe they wanted to kiss their lover full on the mouth while an orchestra of taste crescendoed around them
Caleb came into class today with two cupcakes
One for them and the other for their best friend who hadn’t shown up in two weeks
Claiming “She’ll be here today, don’t you worry”
And the rest of us lapsed into silence, knowing she was never coming back

She, her, hers
No longer will I suffer in silence as those I care most for
Call me something I am not
I am not your daughter, I am your child
I am not your sister, I am your sibling
I am not a girl
I am a nonbinary
I know it makes no sense
But if you just listen you might be able see
To escape the past tense
And start living in the future with me

No longer will we stay quiet
Duct tape over our mouths as we are locked behind closed doors
Buried beneath accusations of
Transtrender
Genderspecial
“You’re just pretending”
No longer will we stay silent
The wrong pronouns whipping our bodies into submission

It
Is not a pronoun
*******
Is not a compliment

You sit in the audience groaning
When will this queer shut up and go home
Isn’t it enough that we acknowledge your existence
But you don’t
I cannot count the times I have been misgendered
I cannot count the times I have wanted to speak up but didn’t
Knowing I would not be taken seriously

Now I will not be silent until there are no more stories of
Schoolyard oppression
Trans suicides caused by a “lesson”
I will scream myself hoarse until
Trans women can walk the streets in safety and
Bathroom means bathroom not
Execution
Remember this
As we are forgotten by our cis siblings
As we are told we don’t exist
As you, the cis  in the front row
Realize
That your daughter at home
May not be your daughter
At all