Your fingers pull at shower-soft hair
Getting longer but not too long
Your eyes are dry but so is your tongue
Because you can’t find it in you to cry

Your chest is tight but it’s not the shirt you wear
It’s your ribs closing in on your lungs.
Your insides are crushed beneath the weight of their words
Pronouns buried like landmines beneath your skin
There’s a sickness inside you
Gnawing on your bones
Black tar sticky in your stomach
A violence pressing against your organs

You’ll feel better when you’ve changed your body
When your voice is deep and there’s hair on your jaw
You can take your shirt off at the beach
And flirt with girls at the coffee shop

Until then there’s no one who can understand
No one to get why you stand before the mirror
Running your hands over your flattened chest
Or practice walking like there’s something between your legs

No one asks why you’re not happy with cancer
Because no one is happy with cancer
But no one understands that your dysphoria
Is a sickness
And its terminal