I am thirteen
    when the mean girls call
me weird—
I do not shave
I do not wear makeup.
I do wear basketball shorts
and messy ponytails.
I am pressured to be her—
Aria.
I shave relentlessly
    for the next two years.

I am fifteen
    full of discomfort
    and anger
breaking my bones like they
    are glass
reckless rage—
all reckless no brave
    depraved of a home
    inside my own skin.

I am fifteen when I
learn what gender dysphoria is.

I am fifteen when I
    realize I am a boy
that I always have and will be
    a boy.

I am fifteen—
putting holes in wall and
    overdosing on advil
like it is a sport
championing my own self demise.

I am fifteen afraid and closeted—
I write my name as
ALEX
on my school assignments
I always change it back
before I turn them in.  

I am fifteen
    convinced everyone loves the girl
I am not
    and will never love me as the boy
I actually am.

I am sixteen crying on the floor
    of a psych ward
    this is my fifth hospitalization
in fourteen months.
Pretending to be her is
killing me.
I choke back tears as I tell
my mom that I am
transgender.
She tells me she loves me,
    and she saw me writing
    ALEX on my papers.

It will take five years
for her to let her daughter go.

I am seventeen when I am shoved
    to the floor in a men's bathroom
    slammed and slurred across the tile—
It will not be until six months into
    Hormone Replacement Therapy
that I use the men's public restroom.
I am eighteen when my moms boyfriend of the
time pulls me aside
and tells me I am making a mistake.
He would wear his mothers dresses and heels,
    hiding in her closet
    all of this is to say
    this is a phase.
When people say that this is a phase—
    I am sixteen
    sobbing on linoleum floors
    covered in cuts
    wanting nothing more than death
    if I have to pretend to be her
    for more than one second longer.

I am nineteen hopeful
    and naive.
Voice cracking and hair sprouting
    I am coming into my own body.
    I have learned that there
    are things much worse than needles.

I am twenty out of the
    ashes of abuse and trauma
    I am finally becoming
    the man I have always been
    meant to be.