Not many daughters can say they have a transgender father.
Paper never felt so heavy as I sat at the kitchen table, reading your letter.
“Did you do anything with your dad this weekend?” people would ask,
Threatening the perfectly crafted image
I had served to them on a silver platter of you.
It wasn't that you wanted to embody femininity that made me hide you away
In a half-empty closet filled with the brittle and fragile skeletons of my past.
Normal----that’s what you tried to make me feel,
That people fall in and out of love faster than it takes
To sign in and out of a social media account.
That divorce is just a word Americans use
To throw in the towel and wash away the misunderstandings at play.
That in the midst of insurmountable change,
I was supposed to put on a smile and remain the same.
Normal----What does that even mean?
Who defines the standard we all live in and breathe?
“I’m transgender,” you wrote to me on the scribbled page,
As a recently discovered fact,
Like the idea of Pluto as a planet no longer intact.
The nauseating smell of aftershave in the air,
The bellow of rage beneath your tongue,
And the thirst for control sewn to your skin
Were all the makings of a masculine costume
You fashioned for speculative minds to fool.
Pretending----we all indulge in this deceptive practice.
Houses appearing spotless in the company of guests,
Combing our hair straight out of bed,
Or a broad grin to mask our heart’s discomfort.
The truth is everyone is afraid to be messy,
Despite the facade of their Instagram stories.
It wasn’t the smack of your hand on my bottom,
When I told a white lie.
It wasn’t the abrupt rise of your voice,
When you heard the sound of my eleven year old cries.
It wasn’t the awkward questions you would ask,
When you arrived home in the clothes of a workaholic.
It wasn’t the way your hellos felt like goodbyes
Or the way your hugs felt like pressed cement on my chest.
It was how you made me learn who strangers really are,
People you know your whole lives without really knowing,
Incapable of building bridges between two hearts,
Or unable to weld two souls together.
Society will always be there to stuff us into boxes,
To make our souls quiver and shake
Beneath the intangible clutches of expectation.
You are my Dad,
Though I don’t know if it is politcally correct to call you that.
You forced me to push my emotions into the same bottle,
You plunged your own into.
Pretend---that’s what you made me do.
Pretend---what I, on my own, should only have the urge to pursue.