I really should want to be here
This impending dread of tomorrow isn’t normal
I claw at my back
Push on my ribs and try
Try to collapse in and maybe just maybe
Concentrating and compacting who I am will make
Me
Clearer and more easily understood
And while my ribs jab my heart and my spine claws my stomach
It is a joyous reminder I have both
My head hurts and my hair falls in front of my eyes
I am just hoping my seams
Are better sown than those of my fading sneakers
Thread bare and fraying I fear coming undone
I don’t want to unravel and be a pile of string
But a ball of yarn is less out of place in this scene than my face

I need change
I don’t want it
Not like you seek comfort
No I seek only survival and change is a necessity to mine
Anyone who has known me long knows this
I constantly cut my hair and change its colors
Wear new things and change the things I have
I am a flowing gypsy not tethered to any place
But no matter how hard I try my personal change holds no grasp on the world’s around me

I am not nor will I ever be
A reflection of the world around me
No matter how I wish and try
I cannot mold the world to reflect the ball of yarn inside of me
I do not hate who I am
I wish not to conform and change who I am
Rather the world to shift its view so what’s inside me wasn’t so foreign and strange
I wish I wanted to be here
I wish I longed to see your faces
But when I take a leave of absence I don’t seek to return
I can take vacations but these journeys are only a reminder of the world that I have to come home to
Not a refreshing break to prepare me to return

There are too many noose filled closets
And too many plastic faces
I wish I didn’t have to face everyone around me as if I was the part of themselves they hate
I wish I wasn’t a target
But I would not change the reminder that I have become
That red flag in the fog in this place that shows people a piece of themselves they tried to bury
I will not change me
I will not change you
But in this twisted backwards world
My refusal to be someone else is a threat to your attempts to be
And I jeopardize your sinking ship of an image you have tried to build

And I am sorry
Not sorry that I force you to no longer deny your identity
I am purely sorry that I live in a world that I have that ability
I am sorry that me and you and everyone sit here
Yet I still am the only one with the power
The only one set upon the task of telling you
That you are human