a crossroads-
my fingers are drooping like dampened socks,
as I am changing like a
kitchen table hardens over spills and
senseless childhood arguments.

i’ve forgotten how to breathe as my lungs strain more heavily,
as drains reject water in hypocrisy and your image haunts the table like an apparition with no social courtesy.

the mirror has been less and less friendly. my hair feels like styrofoam.

i felt my worn-down sneakers attract the wet leaves like magnets in another New England autumn. i wondered why they didn’t repel me like logic, purpose, or your daisy-shaped palms.

we fight and bleed to stick to the bottoms of sneakers but winter will come and lovers will pass,
as any breeze will tell you.

Are we Frodo or are we Sam?

We’re been there and back and
        find ourselves unfound
groundless

Stuck
        in an unknown cog on a wheel we don’t know is turning.

Robert’s misread roads
rise to our feet yet
        is the choice that simple?  Is it that binary?

We are no longer binary.

We are not a yes or no, a black or white:
        a party of two.

How can we choose?
        we can’t

So we sit?

We sit.  We wait.  We emit and pray, ponder and vibrate.

We wait.

We wait.

go back some steps and paint the rest the colors they were meant to be.
parasites preventing psychology-
absent sounds without answers, potential apart metamorphosis.
the mistakes were easy,
splitting monochrome apart of the omniscient wind.

and they never learned anything.

I couldn’t escape the quiescence of ontogeny
descending east or west in our
oblivion as nothing-
these spider webs bury dead
under my intuition
ashamed of my own decisions
refusing to light,
but the flicker always subtle in the night,
aggressive how I wanted to make it shine.

we’re butterflies with broken mirrors,
scintillatingly self-reflecting that our deepest fears will never resonate with
the man under the bridge or the
child in Idaho or the
part of my father i never want to see in myself,
but always will.
hand-crafted maps fade because we’re told to abandon
caterpillars
as if this growth was a virus and not a blessing disguised as
thousands of glass shards unlocking doors.
I wanted to know more.

I couldn't think where my mind begins
it shifts back hollow where I started
blonde curls lost frivolously among the pile of careful maple leaves
you should’ve tried to understand while you
blurred the sharpness of this image,
shades of fuschia indecisions  
evading a dream,
incomplete sets of glass menagerie fog when I fall asleep.
shuffling the shutter, parallel to the stress it put me under.
a life repeating its first day,
continuing cabarets
confusing caves in sheep
crystallize
an endless disease.

flowers don’t communicate in binary;
your daisies were fireworks,
mute mutilations of my morbidity,
simultaneously transforming
sheep from tangible reality.
as I felt every strand of indifference-

IT ALL COULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT.

but
our faces yield yellow hues in
both pines needles and piles of
orange maples.

ashamed of where I hadn't  been
because of the person I have yet to become
knowing what I will never be.
It was strange to see me as a human being
amorphous
feathers drifting incomplete
as crows without grief
circling aware
predicting what I could not escape
luminescent highways miles from fate
time spent
in the essence of these transgressions
pardon me gray.

what can i call colors i see,
branches of the trees from Polaroid memories,
or dreams of what the world should be?
where can i find these answers on this endless canvas,
this bruised, mountainous landscape,
constantly hammering away against our wars with self-abandonment?
what’s the spectrum where
trees and
everyone you’ve ever known that’s felt loss
can sing in harmony?

trapped in my mind,
hope is destiny when it's not in our plans

running out of time,
the colors will fade as limbs grow thicker

footsteps erase.

mirrors adapt.

in this room
noise level
rising
and my pen erupts
the hard truth
it's time to change, again
this frightens me
and i feel lost
transition tightens at my throat
and i start to gasp
i want more of that
terrifying realization
weak and simple
this me, the one that evolved from sand
quickly turned to glass
never setting entirely
permeable and translucent
yet sharp and cutting
she's scratching again
the bars have tightened
the dull and tranquil
merely stagnation
dressed up
bows and pleated skirts in place

Oi
Look
Listen
You

Forgive my tone, I'm not trying to smart, rude or clever.
Gender shouldn't not be tender. Hopefully sooner or later it'll become like: Meh..Yeah whatever."

Flipping through the pages of this album after 50 years
Wishing I could smell the vanilla field
when you were hugging me.
Wish I had a time-machine to say goodbye
Right now I am in this living room where our nephews should have stayed
and where they should have played.

You left this earth
but not my heart
there you will stay until its last beat.
You left your body
but not my thoughts
there you will stay until we meet again
I hate to think "mine" remains unsaid.

Obsession ~

Some of us go through life
And the scars of failures grow
Not feeling like we ever fit in
Until we can take it no more

We try so hard with all our might
Asking God for strength and deliverance
But in the end we loose this fight
And reach a time of decisions

A bell goes off in our heads one day
That starts the obsession to change
It fills our thoughts, our hearts, our minds
And we have no choice but to follow it

In the end we will find our authentic selves
Or we'll likely put a gun to our heads
There is no turning back
There's only do or die trying

If you aren't transgender you won't understand
How these things can be so life threatening
Until you hear that Bell one day
And your lives are turned upside down

by Lj