you’re ahead of me in line
ordering food
a drink with too much sugar
maybe tickets to a movie
that you’re seeing alone

and i want to offer
to eat with you
sit next to you
you can rest your head
on my shoulder

and i’ll hold your hand
on top of the table
because our love
is nothing to be
ashamed of

i don’t know your name
but the way you put
flowers behind your ear
makes me want to
come home to you
year after year

and you’re sitting in
front of me on the max
you don’t notice me
almost falling asleep
against the headache inducing
rattle of the glass window
but the way you so carefully
spread tomato sauce onto
a lunchables pizza
makes my mouth water
makes me wish someone would
touch me like that

and i don’t know your name
but that doesn’t matter
because i’ll learn it when the
time is right and
buy you warm socks for winter
make you pancakes on your birthday
maybe even learn how to
make coffee that isn’t
an insult to the bean itself

and i don’t know your name
but i know you’re the type
of person
that i could fall
in love with

(if i only had the courage
to say hello)

i tell myself
i don’t care that
it’s been two years
since the last time
i saw my father

i tell myself
i don’t care that
he wasn’t even really
in my life until i was 7
and before that i just told
people i didn’t have
a father

i tell myself
i don’t care that
my father hates me

but i’m crying like
my dog just died
so it’s not very convincing

and i can pinpoint when
he stopped loving me
later on in my life
than i've thought for years

but can you really blame me
when he’s not around to ask?

and it’s this book he gave me
a memoir
the summer before i started
my freshman year of high school
where he called me his darling
and signed it “love, pops”

i read that book
last week
cried my way through
almost the whole thing
holding the bent pages and
cracked spine like i wanted
him to hold my hand again

but i did something
when i was growing up
to make him stop loving me
and for years i thought that
if i just went deep enough
i could dig it out
but that thing goes
deeper than my bone marrow

and he’s not around to ask
and i’m crying like an idiot
over this man that
probably won’t even know what
i look like
in 5 years or 10

and i have so many things
to ask him
to say to him
like why he didn’t want to be my father
why he wasn’t proud of me
why he doesn’t love my anymore

how i feel like it’s all my fault
and he probably agrees with me
and that might have made me
resent him
maybe even hate him
a year or two ago
but tonight
it just makes me cry
harder

i hug you
on tiptoes
with arms around your neck
like “girls do”
but i haven’t been a girl
since i was 7 years old
and i know that how you see me
doesn’t match up with
who i used to be

and the first time i
hugged you like that
i told you
i loved you
smelling like 11.5 hours
marinating in other people’s food
and you said you knew
when i said the day was horrible

and i want you to know
i didn’t mean for this to happen
heart eyes you don’t notice
talking about you like
you’re a new favorite book
pages i never want to stop
running my hands over
papercuts be ******

but i love you
for your long hair
black as ink
and other metaphors
and i wonder if you’d let me
run my fingers through it
like some cheesy romance novel

i love you
for your smile
and how you smile at me
still laughing at my lame jokes
about how queer i am

i love you
for how you said you
just have to
sing along to
in the danger zone and
the wall between us
hid a grin so wide
my cheeks hurt

and i love you
even though i know
this will never go anywhere
because i’m never going to
tell you

just how much i love you
just how much i want to kiss you
just how much i miss you
when you’re gone

and just how much i hope
you might love me back
enough to let me
be yours

your name leaves a bitter
taste in my mouth
this has happened before
but never with such
a sense of
finality

i remember when we
first met and i was
a closet lesbian and you
were the new girl with the
colorful skirts and long
brown hair that i wanted
to bury my face in

and you were my
first kiss
my first girlfriend
the first
and only
person i ever fell
in love with

you were also the
first person to break my heart
and break it again
and again
and again over the course
of the next ten years

but i was young and in love
and so naive
believing that we
deserved a happy ending
that i would marry you
that you would want
to marry me

i have been in love
with you for ten years
i loved you as a girl
as a lesbian
and then as a queer man
and i thought
i hoped
you loved me back

but i’ve fallen out of
love with you so fast
it stole my breath
like a punch in the gut
laying down on cold cement
until my breath stops
coming in shallow
painful gasps

i feel used up
like you took all i had
and gave nothing back
we were never meant
to be symbiotic
were we?

well here i am
saying goodbye to you
for what will be the last time
because i just can’t do this anymore
all this back and forth
are you or aren’t you?
are we or aren’t we?
is making my head spin

and i hope you are
able to claw your way out
of this rut before it becomes
your grave

but i am untethering myself
from the mast
of your sinking ship
and i am not
looking back

this isn’t my first rodeo
and by that i mean this
isn’t my first poetry slam
but my hands still shake
and sweat breaks out on my
upper lip and slides
down my spine
like cold fingers

the judge
the white
cisgender
heterosexual
old man judge
looks at me like
he’s trying to figure out
what i am and i want to
tell him that he’s not
the first person to ****
their head to the side at me

and my shoulders hurt
under the tight fabric
of my black chest binder
and i wonder if it
is showing through the
fabric of my white and pink
striped button up

i run a hand through my hair
bright and blond
and in your face
and wonder why all the poems
i read and write
fall under a category
that is not strictly
“family friendly”

maybe it’s because i
am a deeply angry person
from living in fear
since i was seven years old

or it’s because i
decided i was going to
be as loud as i could be
about being transgender
and queer
and mentally ill
because being quiet
felt like giving up

but this judge does not care
about how it felt to
kiss a girl for the first time
to fall in love with a girl
and then to fall in love with
that person again
outside the constrictions of gender

this judge does not care
because he cannot understand
and he does not want to
and this is a poetry slam that
i am not going to win
because the cards of the majority
are stacked against me

but i don’t care about
not winning
because my voice doesn’t shake
when i out myself to a roomful
of people in a town that
i am afraid to use the men's room in

and in that moment
i am not afraid
my voice is strong and loud
and these people are listening
and that judge
can’t hold a candle to the
bright light that burns within me

and just as i know this
he knows it too

i became the only boy
that i wanted to take
my shirt off for
step out of my pants
without falling over
and pull my socks off
one by one

i don’t really know
how this whole thing works
but it seems like dinner
would happen first
maybe i’d bring flowers
say how handsome i look outloud
and mean it

if i still had to wear a bra
i would buy a nice one first
splurge on something more
substantial than a sports bra
maybe something with
an underwire and little ribbons
show that part of me some love

and i would be slow about it
run my hands over this body
that dysphoria has always kept
me from exploring
with my own flesh against flesh

take the time to learn
all the curves and edges
of this vessel that has never
really felt like home
always too tight around
certain parts and too loose
in others

but that wouldn’t matter
because i would be a gentleman
and do this with the lights on
pull my shirt off
in a way that wasn’t rushed
and begging to be put back on
right after it would hit the floor
at my feet

and my knees wouldn’t shake
mapping out the parts of myself
i always wanted to cut off
and my breath wouldn’t falter
but go out easier than it had
in years

because i am the only boy
i ever wanted to take
my shirt off for
and i deserve to feel beautiful
and handsome
and fragile in some parts
because i am still here

******
i am still here

my gender dysphoria
plays the part of schoolyard bully
punching me in the face
with all the things i am doing
that make me less of a man

i spit something back
no room for being witty here
cotton candy pink and blue
stains my teeth
drips down my chin

girlhood feels like a rot
deep within this body
that i am slowly sculpting
into a shape
that doesn’t make me want to
hack it to pieces

but you call me “she”
and dysphoria gets in
another fist
and i can no longer tell
if i am crying
from the pain of you so
callously misgendering me again
and again and again
or the betrayal
because i thought we were friends

but you call me “she”
and so many things break inside me
seven year old me
feeling too big for a body that
is already like dragging
around a coffin
shrinks under the fear
of not knowing what i am

but you call me “she”
and dysphoria drives a foot
into my ribs
grows into this thing
that is too big for me to
keep inside and it comes
out as confrontation that all
too quickly gives way
to tears

because i did not
languish inside of myself
for nine years
stumbling through trying to be
a lesbian and nearly dying
as a girl
for you to call me “she”

i did not spend $175
on changing my name and gender marker
to reflect who i have always been
*******
for you to call me “she”

i did not make the decision
to have a needle the length
of my pinkie and
roughly the size of a pencil led
stuck in my lower back for
the rest of my life
for you to call me “she”


i did not risk
shortening my life span
to 40 years
instead of the 75 or 80 it should be
because people destroy what
is different
for you to call me “she”

i did not survive through
who i used to be
to become the man i am today
for you to throw this
gender i never asked for
back into my face
no matter how many times
i plead with you to
just give enough of a ****
to get it right

i do not get back up
every time that my gender dysphoria
is made stronger by someone
like you who
so you can look
me in the face
see the tears in my eyes
the tremor in my hands
and still call me “she”

the proverbial blood
that runs through my veins
taking on the colors of a sunset
drips onto your hands
because you can’t see past
the things i can’t control
the things i am able to change

you can’t see the man
that i already am
that i always have been
and you still can’t give me
a good reason as to

why why why
you can look at me
with my visible ****** hair
the button clearly stating
my pronouns as he and him
how i light up when someone
calls me sir or mister
and still stoop so low
as to add fuel to the fire
that is my gender dysphoria
by calling me “she”

(what the **** is your problem?)