I am going to a funeral
not sure who for
but it could be any one of us
when his men come to our door


We’ve spent our lives in closets
content with safety over view
but even that gets old
and **** we just wanted a fresh breath or two


So out we came
again and again
a never ending stream
but it felt so good to finally come clean


And now here we sit
under the jurisdiction of our new “president”
a man who hates our kind
and a vp who supports conversion therapy


So don’t you dare tell us
that we should not be scared
because we have PULSE to back us up
and so many years of the same old *******


We are tired
and scared
and wary of all
because who knows who could be the reason why we fall


So please
I beg of you
come and stand with us
hold our hands but do not speak over us


Because we need you
the majorities and all
to stand up to this menace
we do not want to fall


I do not want to go to funerals
that could have been prevented
so please friends hear my words
and take them to heart


Fore there are already too many hashtags
dedicated to my brothers and sisters
and we must end this campaign of hate
because we the minorities are all tired of going to funerals

The ominous clouds of Winter gathered silently over the unsuspecting children of the mountain
ready to cover the children
in her cloak of cold
bringing the ice crystals
hanging down from the eaves of the houses
beautiful but deadly
like so many things in life
but spring will come again
and Mother Winter
will be on the sidelines
waiting to welcome
Persephone back
with slices of pomegranate
and her long fingers of cold
waiting to glide over the earth
because as we all know
there is a time to live
a time to die
and a time where
the flowers will break through the frozen ground
and the earth will come alive again
and your coffee will be just the right temperature
your socks with only a few holes in them
will still keep your feet warm
and you will be so happy to be here
because the world is a beautiful place
and even
Mother Winter needs you there
needs you here
to keep the seasons turning
and i need you too

“Why can’t you just be a tomboy?”
Witty comebacks always come slow when gender is involved, especially with new questions. Surely not new to anyone else, but new to him, at least. Though, it wouldn’t take much to trigger a response, no matter how aggressive or shocked and sad that response might be. But this one, though. This was new. Having never been asked this before, he had no weapons to combat this, to shoot down the asker with a well-placed glare and a retort that would shut them up right away.
He did try, he really did. You have to give him credit for that.
But then his throat choked up, and he fled. The only thing he managed to choke out was that he was going to go now. That was it. Shut down so quickly. From fearless and untouchable to an anxiety attack shaking its way up his spine and into his hands.

“Why can’t you just be a tomboy?”
And there it is again, he thinks. That one sentence wrapping tighter and tighter around his windpipe.
It was a challenge hurrying down the stairs without falling, because the anxiety had him in such a tight grip that he could hardly breathe.
Then there it was, those dreaded bathrooms.

“Are you a girl or a boy?”
There was not time to spend fifteen minutes or half an hour or all day standing between those two things. With his mind screaming MALE, and his traitorous body screaming FEMALE, he ducked into the women’s restroom and stumbled into the handicap stall.

It started then.
A barrage of everything that he had ever been asked because all that people saw were his body: *******, thick thighs, wide hips, a pear shape with curves in all the right places, and it made him sick.

“Since you haven’t had the surgery yet, aren’t you still technically a woman?”
“Butch?”
“****?”
“Are you a boy or a girl?”
“What are you?”
“This is my friend, he’s a transvestite.”

It’s too much, with the tomboy comment still rattling around in his exhausted brain.
And with each thunk of the back of his head against the tiled bathroom wall, he tried to shake them loose. But they wouldn’t leave. Why wouldn’t they leave? He knows that it isn’t true. None of those people know anything. Their questions are out of mostly out of ignorance, and not malice, but, gods, they all hurt so much.

He talks then, a harsh whisper making its feeble way out on the wave of each choking, silent, sob.
“I tried. I tried so hard. And I’ll tell you why I can’t ‘just be a tomboy’ because, ******, I was a tomboy. And you wanna know what that got me? Six years worth of scars on my arm and shoulder.”

He drags the remains of anxiously bitten-down nails down his arm now, over and over again, leaving angry red trails through the pale lines on even paler skin.
“I’ve know that I wasn’t a girl since I was seven. That’s pretty, funny, isn’t it? The not knowing, it almost killed me. I mean that literally, but sometimes swallowing forty pills speaks louder than words.”

The phantom voice, branded into his eardrums and stamped angry and red on the graymatter of his brain, speaks up again. “Why can’t you just be a tomboy?”

And he knows what the real question is now.
Why can’t you just be a girl?
Why do you have to be transgender?
Why can’t you just be happy as a girl?
Why can’t you just be a tomboy?

Getting up off the ground, scrubbing tear tracks from his cheeks and off his glasses, he presses the back of his throbbing head against the tiled wall, whispering to everybody and nobody, “SHUT UP.”

an ulcer waiting to happen
sits in the metaphorical pit of my stomach
it has been there for years

I feel it in
the shaking of my hands
from medication that made it chronic
and the fidgeting of myself

my feet tap
my knee bounces
and sometimes it is only the
1 2 3 4 of counting my glasses
an earring in each ear
and my septum piercing
that keeps me sane

but that is often not enough
these movements do not quiet
the urges to flee

and I curse my anxiety
a disorder that is slowly
eroding my insides and outsides

I curse this disorder
from the cuts chewed into my lips
the blunted and bitten fingernails
down to my legs that are always
ready to go go go
because this isn’t who I was supposed to be

my parent’s do not want me
neither one does
that is two of them
count em
fits on one hand
took two to make me
and both of them to send me away

i do not have a home with my mother
she has made that more than clear
kicked me out three times
and it was because i had decided that
i was no longer going to let her abuse me
giving her my childhood and 11 years of my life
was more than enough
and for ***** sake
i had already tried to **** myself to get away from her
and it didn’t work
so ****

my father is an *******
never has known how to be a parent
he can do weekends and overnight once in a blue moon
but ask him what’s for dinner
and suddenly he’s your slave
and you’re holding him hostage because of how fickle you are
yup sounds about right
and he just can’t stand not to have his living room any longer
he needs it
he just needs it so terribly
but no no dear one dear heart apple of my eye
he is not kicking you out
just being an abusive and manipulative ****

and i really do wonder
why my mother and him didn’t work out
because after all
they are just the same
abusive
prone to substance abuse
both have been alcoholics
though my mother may be more of a lush now
i don’t know
i don’t live with her anymore
but i guess they didn’t work out
because it must be really hard
to see yourself in the person that you are *******
and not just in a ****** way
but they are just like you
and ******* you hate it so much

so you leave them
don’t bother being in your only child’s life
until they are seven
and the child cuteness has left
and has been replaced by
a something
this is not your daughter
this is a ****** up kid
who doesn’t know what the hell they are
but is too afraid to ask or tell
either one of their parents
because mommy just wants to put bows in her daughter's hair
and daddy just wants to sleep all the ******* time
so hush little baby
keep it under wraps until it kills you

and *******
i come from a **** sandwich of a family
neither of my parents want me
two slices of abusive and crazy
with me right in the middle
and god
please don’t let me turn out like either one of my parents
i would rather die than be like either of them
and isn’t that sad
but who is surprised
at this point

because these two people
pathetic excuses for a parent
both of them
each of them
in the same and their own special ways
can’t even be bothered to try and glue back
together the broken vase pieces of their
son

and you know what
i hope the ******* step on the glass

i am my father’s son
born up out of a grieving mother
that did not want a child
not a baby that needed to be fed
and nursed and changed and loved
she did not know how to be a mother
perhaps she was too young
but even i stopped believing that lie years ago
because even i know
with no intention of having children of my own
(too afraid that i’ll turn out like her)
that a mother’s love should not have an expiration date but more often than not it does

and for my granny
my father’s mother
her love ran out too soon
and he put so many miles and states between them that he has forgotten he even has a mother
and even though i do love my granny
i still hate her for breaking my father in so many ways that he had to smoke and drink out the parts of himself that were too much like her
and even now
with so many states and years between them
that is a kind of hurt that never goes away
and gods sometimes i ask myself why
people have children when they cannot be parents

and maybe that is why she hates me
(the woman that carried me with her
for nine months
and then years after that
who would have gone to the ends of the earth
for me if i had asked her to)
because there is so much of my father in me

i am his son
same hair and glasses and the expressive hands
and the need to be constantly moving
to be heard and seen and to exist
maybe my existence was too loud for her(?)

i have always been his son
even when she did not want me to be
she saw him in my eyes
and i in his
and there was no room for her
because she had left us both years ago
and she resented us for it

because i am not hers
i never have been
with the last name that i am refusing to keep
and the old house-key that i purposely lost
i am my father’s son
and i always will be

(and she resents me for it)
(she hates me for it)
(she tells me it makes me an unloyal son)
(but i am learning not to listen to her anger)

because i am my father’s son
and i always will be