SUFFERING was a word invented by a man
with a silver spoon and fork,
with a nice brain that matched their junk
a brain that didn’t whisper i love yous in the middle of the night
when you’re trying just to get some sleep
but your mind
echoes self-love where you can’t get it.

and that word is whispered to the back of my head
to the front of my chest
inbetween my thighs like maybe you’ll make a difference
if you express sympathy for a body,
just a body that oozes what you would call
misfortune.

but i am not your headline;
people like me are not your story,
you put me down with black ink on white paper
and your dichotomy echoes the insincerity
in your sincerity
the way you cannot understand that when you put
transgender or gay you expect it to mean tragedy.

i am not your tragedy
**** do not chain me to a stereotype
i am not “your trans* friend,”
a unicorn that has been trapped and ****** of silver blood,
my ****** chains me to a history of hostility and scars
that i have risen ABOVE.

i see your face fall when i say my body is beautiful,
and hear your hitching breath when i tell you i am just like you
a being with a body who is trying to see
the glory in mismatched parts
imperfect scars
and i am not SUFFERING
i grabbed the word from the dictionary
and shoved it down your throat.

The world ends with a mouth full of cotton,
A misaligned bloodstream.
2:21 AM. The world ends with
Your lips, far away from mine
And mediocre poetry
Dotting the inside of
My eyelids.

my father knows a ******.  it’s not my fault.  the two of them share a cigarette outside of a house they’ve never been inside.  it’s winter.  I scroll across Ohio on a sled with makeshift sail.  I associate sorrow with the very short.  I associate my father with sentences that end abruptly.  I wear the mark he meant to leave on the world.  I understand.  it is forgivable.  there are harder things to get in the way of.  a mirror, perhaps.  a hand on a bible.  my own hand, which tells mother I’m adopted.

Under her dark veil she wrung her hands.
"Why are you so pale today?"
"Because I made him drink of stinging grief
Until he got drunk on it.
How can I forget? He staggered out,
His mouth twisted in agony.
I ran down not touching the bannister

And caught up with him at the gate.
I cried: 'A joke!
That's all it was. If you leave, I'll die.'
He smiled calmly and grimly
And told me: 'Don't stand here in the wind.' "