While I likely have no rhythm
and tend to trip over my feet
that would hold back a dance.

While I have debilitating anxiety
that highlights others’ stares
I may still give it a chance.

No, see, the reason I won’t dance
has way more to do with my body
and the fact that I’m trans.

As I move through the world
I feel the weight of my identity
in both physical and mental distress.

Of course everyone has baggage
that doesn’t stop them from jiving
but not everyone has to carry it on their chest.

Dancing requires movement of my entire frame
but the person I see in my head
isn’t the one that light reflects.

How can I move without highlighting
the feminine figure my clothes conceal?

How can I jive
while hiding how my chest wiggles?

Can they tell?
Girl?
Guy?
What do they see?

The questions anchor my body to the ground
So I cannot move.
I cannot dance.

I'm either too much,
Or not enough,
It's never in-between,
And when you,
Look at me,
I don't know,
What you see.

My masque has been on so long
It is starting to fuse to my skin.
Worn, paint fading,
there are cracks in it.

For every ounce of joy
each chip of plaster brings,
with it too a pound of pain
each time it gets replaced.

I found happiness in another,
hopefully forever,
though they've only seen my masque.

I found my ride-or-die-for love,
and they theirs,
though they've only seen my masque.

I would give my soul to break it off.
To take the stitching out,
Yet can not bring myself to,
for fear has chained me
to my tear stained masque.

Darkened days and wet cheeks are all that I can see from rays of sun
upon my shadows
were my masque betrayed.

So on my face it stays, but nothing outside will change, 
they've only ever seen my masque.

a body
floating in space
a mirror
unknown, a face
a chest, that rises and falls
*******, unwanted, I stall
this label, this name, this "girl"
whom only on certain days, echoes my world
otherwise i'm known as the ghost
an inbetween, a maybe,
almost.

He awoke and found himself
inside the body of another.
Safe in the darkness
gentle amniotic arms held him whilst muffled voices dictate his fate
“You’re having a girl” they exclaimed,
and he lay, wondering what this meant.  

He awoke and found himself  
inside the words of another.  
Inside the “brother” he never was, rather than never had  
and the “boy”  that scuffed his knees in adventure.  

He awoke and found himself
“a pretty girl”, “a princess”, “just like her mother”
so he closed his eyes and dreamt of another.
A world of train-sets and barber shops,
birthday candle wishes to replace long, curly locks

he awoke, and found himself floating
in space
his face, unrecognisable in the mirror.  
His chest seemed to grow branches  
as if by night the doctors that had pulled him from her womb
had suddenly discovered his secret.  

They grew like thorns until they were all he could see.
Those and the other boys, s h a t t e r i n g jigsaw piece body parts
every time he looked at them.  
He wondered why when their voices deepened, it was called a voice  
break and not a gift.  
A broken larynx. A birthday present lost in the post,
instead he unwrapped their super glued puzzle pieces,
piling them onto his plate
if you eat your vegetables, you’ll grow up to be a man.

“You’re having a girl”, more like “You can pass go but you will never collect 200 dollars”.
“You’re having a girl”, more like “earthquakes will erupt inside your mind every time you hear the words
“She”, “Her”, “Sister”
“You’re having a girl”, but he was  

“He”, “His”, “Mister”.

And when he cut his hair, and found himself  
in the arms of over-sized t-shirts and grown out leg hair,
they would say
“you look like a boy”, as if they expected him to protest in offence
but his heart feels as warm as the breeze that blows through thornless branches of trees  
and he wants to say thank you.  
He wants to say that the words  
“You look like a boy” manage to stitch up his jigsaw piece body parts,
for these are the words that cut through his mothers dresses and threw away the thread
these, are the words that in time would cause his voice to break;
remind him that he is not broken
and bury his girlhood beneath his bed.

I'm sorry it has taken so long
For me to recognize your light
Yet I'd be lying to say that
I'm blind to the darkness you reflect
Off of each curve and thicker
Piece of skin with the images of
My past pain swimming across the surface

Although I've hidden the old scars behind New ones
filled with ink, the stains
Never truly lift from my pale limbs
Leaving paler veins that bulge through the art
But I hold no shame for those choices

My bleeding scars reflect a beautiful life
Within the death I felt looming too closely as
I was forced to be an adult in a child's body
As I begged for death and was given life with
All the prospects of becoming whole
Only after endless trials of trauma

Whether by blade, glass, and metal
Or starvation, pressure, and pills
I tried to paint the picture of a dreamland life
Across the human limbs that I blamed for my pain
Due to my distorted perspective of perfection
Because the shapes never fit together
And the moment I reached "enough"
It always became too little

Not small enough, not flat enough
Not worthy of love
Too masculine, too feminine
It always seemed wrong
But now I know that
My body is not the enemy

Through the dysphoria
My body still breathes
And I am no less human
Even if my reflection does not reach my skewed standards of decency

Because perfect does not exist
Because the shame I've been dealt
Is not my responsibility to carry
I can learn to love my body
Without skipping meals and
Without the sweet relief of pain
Because I am only human
And our bodies are all beautiful
Because they're ours

hi! my name is DEADNAME
i hear it resonate through my dysphoria, i recoil from my body. i desperately want to hold a match stick up to my birth certificate and watch every letter blacken into ash, when i grow up to be a tombstone i want you to burn me too. ignite all the dresses i wore to church.

my name is WOMAN and
no matter how many times i insist that it is not, i will be categorized with a quaking punch in my stomach and i will throw up SHE. no matter how many times i jam this hoodie into a washing machine it will reek of MISS. i am cloaked with words of caution to the public (WARNING: PROBABLY JUST A PHASE) in attempts to subdue the truth because if it unraveled i would be myself, and myself will shatter minds and destroy virtue because my psyche is a crime scene, my humanity is a dangerous opinion, and my identity is a car crash. it is a siren wailing magenta; it wraps around my chest like police tape- i wish i could use it as a binder. those knuckles feel infinitely more therapeutic than the aftershock of FEMALE. i would much rather be bruised and downtrodden and battered and beaten from every centimeter of my body than to submit to the declarations of GIRL. i want you to punch me again please punch me again please punch me again please punch me again please punch me again please

my name is DELUSIONAL and
i heal paper cuts with bow ties because it’s as close as i can get to a suit when me and my wardrobe are confined within the same nine square feet of wooden floor. i still come close to weeping when i get my flu shot, but fill that syringe with testosterone and by god you can slay me like a beast, skewer that needle through my skin like a katana and i will embrace it. i will live for the torment, pretty hurts and, by god, i am a *******, to mask the sting by god i will sing like a gospel, a gospel who gets called handsome by strangers and owns a voice deep as a ******* ravine.

my name is SNOWFLAKE and
i hope i give you hypothermia, *******.

my name is YOUNG LADY and
while filling out my passport application i flooded the box with an M beside it with ink and never told my mother and i smiled to myself for the first time that week and i still don’t regret it, i will never regret it because no matter how many times i hear edicts of DAUGHTER she can never take that precious M away from me.

my name is SINNER and
i am a disgrace to faith. a mutant, a freak, an abomination, a monstrosity, not a man- just a girl who aspires to mutilate herself into an excuse for one. i am a shapeshifting sorcerer, you see LESS THAN HUMAN. little do you know i am a ******* DEMIGOD and i may be the owner of weeping willow twigs for arms and i may be left on the brink of passing out when i climb up the stairs but i will grip you by the collar of your shirt and haul you into hell with me on the other side of this mirror, by god.

my name is BLAISE.
i found this out at age eleven. i deciphered myself at age eleven. it’s just one syllable. it is a firecracker mistaken for a gunshot and i will leave cisnormativity riddled with bullets and the pistol’s name will be BLAISE. a kid from middle school will run into me on the street and tell me they can’t quite remember what my name is and i’ll shamelessly rewrite history and remind them, it’s BLAISE; a lady at starbucks will ask what to write on my cup and i will say BLAISE and she’ll spell it 'blaze', but i don't give a ****, it’s good enough, i will scream my revelation from my fire escape at four in the morning in triumph MY NAME IS BLAISE and someone will yell back from their car HEY BLAISE, SHUT THE **** UP and i’ll take it as a tribute, BLAISE is a MAN and HE sliced his body open and poured ecstasy inside when a cashier called him SIR that one time at walgreens. BLAISE is yet another piece of proof that the assignment received by some ****** in a lab coat doesn’t have to be a prison and you don’t fully understand these boxes we’re crammed in until you break them yourself. BLAISE'S individuality is authentic, HIS love is authentic, HIS reflection in the mirror is authentic, and its name is BLAISE. BLAISE found out the life expectancy of a transgender person is around thirty-two years old and you better believe that BLAISE will live to be thirty-three and HE will give a little bit of hope to trans youth who don’t even think they’ll be able to wake up to sixteen and HE will give a big ol’ ******* to everyone who doesn’t think HE deserves to breathe in their world for that long, by god, you better believe that BLAISE will live to be thirty-three, you better believe that BLAISE will make it to thirty-three, you better believe that HE will make it to thirty-three, you better believe that I will make it to thirty-three.

Once upon a time there was a boy named Iden
Nobody knew his real name
He stayed in his room, where he cried in
His body wasn’t right, what a shame.

“What a precious lady”, they said
He wanted to scream
“It’s a phase”, they said
He could only daydream.

The mirror must have a glitch
He was certain
The reflection caused an itch
Of what, it was uncertain.

i make eye contact with myself and ask why i won't stop scratching at the insides of my ears and well you know nobody should have to look at themselves in the mirror and i know i told you before how sorry i am for thinking you're cute but the voice you heard wasn't even mine, not really, and an instagram post won't solve anything because when my eyes are closed i don't know where my hands are and i thought my roommate was home this whole time but she just came in so who walked the dog? was it me? is this like when i called from the kitchen floor and you wouldn't come over, or more like the time i thought you were going to die and spent the night in your barn - no it isn't like that, couldn't be like that because i learned to skip class and sing with birds.

still

the first time i got kicked out of a public restroom i did not tell my parents but when home and used my mother's mirror to have a staring contest with my scrawny eight year old reflection (and of course i could not defeat myself). i threw away the hand-me-down cutoff denim shorts and begged for pierced ears.