i wish i could take it's power
make it mean nothing to me
have it mean someone else
but it was me
its a reminder i am not
who i want to be

Today, I typed into my Google search bar
“How to stop being trans.”

I am so desperately attempting to repress my identity I felt the need to Google it,
I spend day in, and day out, watching women on the internet talk about what it is like to be a woman.
Even now, that concept confuses me.

There is something I will never truly understand about being a woman-
That is the feeling of being female.
It’s something I’ve never really had, even though I go through those hardships and more.
I am talked about like I am an object, referred to as “it” by so many kids at this school,
Just as many of the transgender students going to my school are.

I am treated physically like an object whenever I attempt to present as a woman,
And I realize there is no way to go around being an “it.”
Nothing more than a mere object used for someones entertainment,
Thrown away when they have gotten their thrill out of me.
I am nothing more than a cancelled TV show
Who’s reruns are on at midnight, or early Sunday morning.

I am nothing more than the little wooden toys toddlers play with,
Thought of as ‘cute’ when young,
But told I am to grow out of the phase of playing with toys.
Told to grow out of the phase of being a boy.

No matter how short I cut my hair, or how tight the binders I wear are,
How baggy the jeans, or how many button-ups or flannels I buy,
I am told it is just a phase.

I have been fighting with my identity in the open for nearly five years.
First, it was an internet presence,
I learned the word “genderfluid.”
I used that term for a good three months,
And then I found a new word.
“Agender.”

I was agender for years,
Even somewhat out at the school I went to-
In the fifth grade, I was asked what I truly was.
This question is going to be repeated until the day I die.

In seventh grade, something fully dawns on me.
I am nothing more than a transgender boy with an affinity for putting art on my face.
I panic as I tell the four people I had in my arsenal at the time.
Thus begins the era of “Brodie.”

This lasts for a few months, until I am uncomfortable with the name.
I finally, for two years, settle on the name “Alexander,”
And then, at the end of eighth grade, I am ready to come out to teachers.

No one is able to keep up with it, because it had been at the very end,
But as I start my highschool career, I confidently call out,
“I prefer Alexander.”

The people in my old band class don’t really think twice, but a small murmur falls through the crowd of the homophobes in the corner.
My German teacher opens the idea with wide arms, and takes me under her wing.
I become her son.
I start pondering a new name in the last month of the first year, twisting it over my tongue.
“Julian.”
I like the way it sounds, but no one thinks it fits me.
I sigh, and repress the name until nearly the very middle of my sophomore year.

In my freshman year, I had once Googled the same question.
It has been a year of attempting to repress it on my own.
Google Search still does not give me an answer.

I realize that I am nothing more than a transgender boy.

Your smile’s as bright as the morning sun
I revel in your confidence and fun
You know who you are and where you’re going
I merely watch from the sidelines knowing
I miss your touch, your hands and your comments
We pass sometimes telling all in segments
I want to dance, but you’ve let go of me
You found another boy of yours to be
I’ve seen you get hurt and it hurts me too
But I’m just a boy who hasn’t a clue
How to speak and explain how I feel now
You saw me once as somebody somehow

I woke up today at the border of the morning, in that old war bunker, crowded with boxes and medical supplies, missing the asphalt and the tree line
Half dead and unaware, in this undead pharmacy, taking fragments from the shelves
And who's really gonna stop me if there is no one around?
Wasted all of my prayers on all of the obvious things
days spent walking miles to the pawn shop, or the futility of looking for what to take with me

My visions of thin skin are poking at their veins, of which I'm having memories of in unrelenting fashion
and though I'm only 23 my heart feels like a chasm
of mayflower proportion

I think to write you a letter, think fast to find a pencil, but there never is one, so I crumble up the paper
I think to write you a letter, but there never is one
But it'd be cruel not to leave one
So with all the strength I can muster, with the most minimal of treasures that haunt this long abandoned shelter,
I am hardly able to form words, let alone sentences
The crumbled paper giving under my childlike formed fist
And I see my face in Judy Garland's, in the glass, my reflection in a framed picture
my Judy
The last letter
Spilling out from my lips

I am not beautiful yet
I am ugly to the very core
but I will rearrange my bones, if not for this, then for that framed picture
and what it reflected

They imagined Him again
And again
And again

They tried to replace Him with Her
But They couldn’t
He just kept coming back

They Never took interest in Dolls
Or Castles
Or princes and Princesses

They played King of the hill
with the Guys
Pretended that They were a Knight

They felt and looked awkward in Dresses, the Feminine makeup
Or Long hair

They wore button ups tucked into black, Combing Back hair
And tightening a Necktie

They would cringe at the sound of Their voice,
Their laugh

And hope that They could slip by as Their self
Despite it all

They had denied
Denied
Denied

Just androgynous
Repeatedly
They lied

They lied
They lied
They lied

Make Him go away

Make Her go away

What were They supposed to tell Their loved ones

All the girls with their knees in the sand, stretching all throughout the shore, like a mass modeling gig
And me, I laid on my side, curled up and somewhat hidden in the sand
The buildings with their business, and their free form people, stood up and looked straight down on me
And I closed my eyes, and I held myself and cried

It was there that the salt air invaded my thoughts, breathing in, nose was running, I picked myself up, merely stumbling from where I arose
And I was warmer, climbing out from that umbrella, the sun touching these brazenly exposed parts of my body that I still tried my best to hide in such a setting
And Dandy, he's been gone for a bit now
So I split down the narrower parts

And the sun started setting towards my back, and my bare feet were starting to get cold
But the lights, they stayed lit, and dim like a friend in a moment of doubt
And a song played from the bar, it echoed a ways about, and all the people were hoping its words could save their moments and keep them somewhere

And some people gathered around me, asking me questions and looking concerned, from what I could tell
But I wasn't quite listening, I was too busy singing a song to myself
hoping my words would save my young body
from death
from aging
from something I felt

Often times a question regarding death, "what happens, where do you go?"
I'd say it's neutral, no ringing ears, nothing at all.
Though I've grown up neck deep in the tired and frightening atmosphere of death, nights spent as a child contemplating my own existence, I had learned to accept it at a fairly young age
This question no longer bothers me

Before I walked, before I talked genuinely, I was a million questions, a million ideas all kept under lock
And the way I walked and talked was not my own
And now, some days they'll call me a "man", but what I am is a hybrid of all of these thoughts
bright and faded colors, painted fingers and toes, distorted and vulnerable

And that sudden burst of consciousness at birth was the same I'd come to know in that moment, at the bottom with the fishes, counting pictures and having visions with my last bit of oxygen. Mermaids, gold glitter, and snakes in the water.
Never had I known such a gentle touch, among some collapsed lakeside cottage.

And that is why I am no longer afraid of death, because to cease to exist is not any kind of experience.
And I will always remember, the sudden burst of consciousness just before the renaissance that ensued from your touch.

And I will not wait
And I will sing in a violently feminine fashion
before the day my lung collapses

mother's flats again, a size too small
breathing
the old, empty box of hair dye by the sink looks nothing like me
my hands leaning against the counter, another prayer
feeling my breath, a slow exhale
air
a vacancy, though a victory
counting
the contrast of a dimly lit kitchen and a shy, partly cloudy morning
i looked once more at the eviction
counting crosses on the walls
the toy beetle poking its wheels out of the small closet
darkness in the hall
gave one last costly smile before letting them sleep
it was all that i could do