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He bought me my first binder for Christmas with the money he borrowed. Too bad his parents don't even know who he his. They spell his name as if femininity can be felt through the words of his given birth name. C for the courage he has to go through , h for his pronouns. R for every word they speak he will always make faking it look revolutionary. I, I will never be as strong as him. S, do they see that he is not their daughter but their son? Their emotions dripped like candle wax slowly melting and hardening against each other and for them it was their safety, their dreamland when reality just couldn't feel any worse. His parents scoffed and said that he must go to therapy like the confessionals he's forced into each sunday. His sins he must beg god to forgive but they don't see him like I do. A, for the days he can't appeal to them he appeals to her to make their refuge. N, not for nuture but nature this is all human nature. T, time, he must wait to be who he is. O, I will always know him as an overcomer.  N, he can't muster up the words to say never. Even when they mispronounce his name and give him the wrong gender. He will merely play dress up for them and they will never know the Anton that I know
Forgive me father for I have sinned, wait what's the part after that? Isn't it go ahead my child? I don't really know because religion has always felt like a relationship I just can't commit to, while others are on their knees begging for forgiveness I was on the white tiles while the only blood of Jesus I saw was my own. Forgive me-wait you see I'm suppose to say forgive me father but it's more like why did you forget me father ? You breathed the life into my mother's stomach and then like hoodini disappeared only to reappear when the sting from the cut had started to scab you ripped it off like the bandaid I had to leave on for so long because as a child all I wanted to do was heal. Honor thy mother and...thy father? Is that really the thing to do after barricading yourself into my arteries with the knife you chased mom with. Forgive me father I don't know what I've done but somehow being born was the sin that condemned me from ever feeling your love as a soft emotion but of something I must always beg for. Forgive me father I cannot seem to see things straight and for that you will surely disown me as if you owned me when you put your  DNA into the mixing bowl to recreate your mistake that you so proudly claim on taxes. Forgive me father for I have sinned I wrote another poem again thinking someone would care to hear my voice, but they shot it down like the deer I am. Now I lay me down to sleep I pray--- who has my soul because they told me I lost it when I kissed her when I tied myself down and told them how to pronounce my name. Forgive me father for I have sinned?  Just by putting on the female body I live in.
Dear crippling sadness that makes it so tragically difficult to get out of bed in the morning,
You’ve been the imaginary friend i just can’t seem to outgrow the people who use to stare at me and get paid to tell me “oh that’s normal you’ll be okay that man will never find you again….you were after all only five” they told me that i had to take this tiny white happy pill because you….you are the chemical imbalance i suffer from daily. Instead of taking a prescription or therapy i take my thoughts bundle them up like a bouquet and pray to a god i can’t seem to believe in that today i’ll be okay.
 Dear monster that lives inside my brain that i can only see,
when will enough be enough? The people who matter most to me are starting to realize i’m a project that can never be finished…..but was i really even started to begin with? You are that failing grade that is sinking my ship that use to be heading for graduation.
Dear Depression,
you see you and i play so well together, you say jump i ask how high. You teach me that this low i feel can get lower and deeper until i’m six feet deep with a tombstone to decorate how my life has been lived. Everyone will wear black, but my life was so colorful it does not need to be represented by the ugliness of you but merely how creatively i lived. While others were super outgoing and ready for the day i liked to play a little game of “drink some coffee and remember that today is just another play im starring in”. Others were talking about how dances and parties were coming up i learned to play “dressup” i could dress up a wound, i could dress up my look so you would not leak through the bandages of an already forgotten night.
Dear ‘I want to care but it’s not in me today to even care to try’,
Having anxiety and depression is like not caring about anything but caring way too much about everything, to the point i get a new assignment and start crying. Depression, the summer before my ninth grade year you taught me the trick of how to disappear, coffee in the morning, salad at dinner there was no room in my stomach to eat more than that. My therapist stared at me and told me our little friend ana was on her way to take over me completely and out the door into the coffin i would go. They said my body will cave in on itself as if my ribs were too fragile to carry this weight i had left on me. So it began to eat away the bad. I’d lay in bed at night and the gnawing feeling at the pit of my stomach was each award i was given for every rib they could see.
Dear mom and dad,
You told me to just be happy. So that day i took all of my antidepressants i was just doing what you told me to do. Who knew it’d be labeled under an overdose.
  Dec 2015 Jaxton Tyler Redmond
icarus
There are too many things I regret telling you, darling. I regret telling you about how when I was little I nearly died in the accident that totaled my parents' Jetta. I regret mentioning that I felt like your Halloween costume was more important to you than I was. I regret that you let me convince you to help you clean your ******* room so I could feel important. I regret every tear I've made you shed and your pain is carved into my brittle bones so I know just how much I've hurt you. Honestly, I've started to realize how much of a miracle it is that you haven't changed your mind about loving a broken and battered shell of a human being wearing a smiling mask that comes off so slowly it peels away what's left of my pale, flaking skin. I'm surprised you're still interested in my thinning body and tattered soul. My name falling from your lips in ecstasy still sounds so foreign, like hearing a language you never even knew existed. You look at me like I hang the moon in your night sky, making me feel unworthy of the way you treat me, not like a broken toy but rather an ancient heirloom to be treasured and mended. I find myself tossing and turning at night wondering and worrying and whittling away at the fragile self confidence I build when I'm with you and I ******* regret. I regret not opening up and I regret the indisputable fact you could do so much better than me. There are still so many things I regret and letting you read this is one of them but these are all things you need to know and my heart is still in pieces beneath our feet. Yes, there will always be things I regret, but loving you will never be one of them.
Not gonna lie, I'm considering recording this one.
I could never muster the courage to tell you every time I had to beg for the rights to my own body. I can never tell you, spinning stories woven into my temporal lobe and locked into my spinal column; how everywhere I look I see* his face. My failed attempts at opening up are wilted by my desire to open myself up to you like a late blooming flower. Drowned by the tears I cannot show you I shed every night when i'm all alone and can't seem to keep the poker face strong anymore. I will never have the audacity to clearly show you how damaged i've become, you can already taste it in every kiss.  I don't know how to bring myself to let you hold my demons inside your arms as if they are a newborn baby you have yet to love. Every single time i open my mouth my past begins to talk as if possessed by my greatest fears . My guts are spewing , spilling overboard and  I am terrified to show you what he did to me
*One year,  ten months, that's how long it's been since i  sliced his presence from my body and yet it's still haunting me. They keep telling me that i will never be okay that i will  solely  learn how to  cope with the amount of trauma he caused.  For every message that appears on my dimly lit screen that tells me he's been thinking of me, i suppose i failed at completely blocking him out of my life like those unwanted friends i never seem to delete.  Today it snowed, and i couldn't help  but remember how safety use to feel and his fingerprints still linger against the pale skin i live in. That's all it is now is my body bag that still seems to breath.
I can never tell you how much i adore that beautiful face of yours i'm afraid you'll see too much and leave me in the dust like he left me in that tunnel, on that carpet in that park. How do i let him control me?   I still manage to cower down  and be the submissive but he's no longer hovering over me, towering to  get complete control. He will forever be that ghost that remains a scar way too deep to heal.
  Dec 2015 Jaxton Tyler Redmond
goddess
wipe your tears, and pick up your crown.
promise me you won't tear yourself down.
my queen, you mean so much to me.
i love you.
please pay attention to me.
you're worth so much more than you think yourself to be.
but i'm done trying.
i clearly cannot stop you from crying.
i'm sorry my dear, but i must leave.
perhaps when i'm gone you'll finally believe.
if you ever need me you know where to find me.
  Dec 2015 Jaxton Tyler Redmond
Skai
I swear I will not
overthink
you
this time.

I will not act
on my feelings,
only because I
care about
one of my best friends.

We have not
stopped
talking.

Constantly
back
and
forth.

I think you could
be good for me,
but we will never
know because
I care about
her
too much.
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