The Life I Built from the Closet is comfortable, I know what people expect from me.
The Life I Built from the Closet is black and white thinking.
The Life I Built from the Closet is pink and blue gendering parties.
The Life I Built from the Closet is church etiquette and weddings.
The Life I Built from the Closet is volunteering and church events.
The Life I Built from the Closet is getting used to the heteronormative narrative of romance.
The Life I Built from the Closet is high stakes walking into church and not actually being who I am. Because as a wise friend once told me you are who you are. I am a bisexual woman through and through.

I don't always feel like a woman.
I look like a woman but I don't always feel like one.
Some days I am a woman. Other days I am a man. My body doesn't change but how I feel does.
Some days I am both man and woman. I feel this way all the time.
I realize all those times I grew up with panic attacks. I was panicking about how I was expressing my gender not about my homework.
I am a gender fluid, bisexual woman.
I am not afraid to admit it now.

When someone fears not my freedom
opens their grip and surrenders
any hold on me
the blessed result is a kind of peace -

maybe a pause before I approach the cliff
but in that small moment a glimmer of grace
enough to save me

a space to crawl a few layers deeper
to find what lies beneath,
a slender root, a fertile bit of soil

a mystery on the desert plain
that nurtures a tender shoot
to take me into a hazy future

Freedom to die
to the hell within me
to the surface me
that pretends control
to the hidden pain that gobbles my light

These little deaths free me
to embrace the little boy within
the creative self
the beautiful alive soul
the pure core
that sustains us all.  

When Some One, anyone, fears not my freedom
opens their grip and surrenders…