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 grandma, the doctors said I was born a girl why don't I feel like a girl? If I rip open my chest will the answers come pouring out for you
Dear grandma, you told me to take off the dress up I've been wearing these past few months so you could be happy with me accepting the body I was given but I have yet to be that butterfly that hatches out of the cocoon this body has been. Dear grandma you told me God and Satan are in a war and I am the prize they win for whoever is the champion.  you told me this is just an act and I need to quit it I may be a theater kid but I'm not this good at make believe. I am not after all this witch you think I am, or rather warlock if you will. Dear grandma if I starve myself enough will that reset my body into thinking of myself in female perspective
Dear grandma, do you know I live in fear everyday not just for my life but I fear even saying the wrong words to make you explode like the bomb that took the twin towers out….  so i've learned to live in silence.
Dear grandma,  start planning her funeral she's no longer with us and her presence  has long been forgotten by most her  name  no longer exist, my tongue stopped forming that name as soon as i grew up. I've been trying to tell you this all along but I just barely got the courage to let you know so lets light her memories up in flames and with the ashes make my new identity a reality because right now it feels like I'm living in fantasy. Dear grandma, I know you are old school and you don't understand how this works, I will teach you. My pronouns are male so refer to me as him, or he. tory has never quite fit so let's scrawl that on the tombstone you can cry and throw the roses but grandma this is me. I know you raised me for most of my life and you feel as if I'm betraying your trust by being True to myself but grandma wearing cologne is not gross and I'm tired of biting my tongue when you put your two cents in. you said every time I act like someone I'm not the devil wins, so with every inch  the blade dug itself into upon my wretched skin I was just trying to find the loophole out of this. Grandma I don't let my poetry get too deep it's always skin deep because if I let it go any further it everyone will see the body dysphoria. They say that the eyes Are windows to the soul grandma but why does it feel like mines shattered from all those religious talks you keep stacking on me. Dear grandma, this Christmas I just want you to spell my name right. Dear grandma, today's Christmas and I just want acceptance.dear Grandma stop throwing the ******* pebbles at me they have turned into the boulders dragging me down to the bottom of the ocean that I use to think was your love.  Dear grandma, I'm begging you all to love me and to stay but it's so hard when you keep pulling away, you cut the ties from the rubber bands so you wouldn't bounce back to me because loving me is a job you were never hired to do. Because loving me was never taught in your high school classes. Because calling me part of your family was something Jesus told you not to do. So dear grandma, who's gonna love me when you all walk out like a homeless person from a soup kitchen. Dear judy, I guess I should use your name now because you can't seem to be a grandma. Dear judy, it feels like pins and needles are crawling through every orifice of my body when you tell me that I can't be who I'm meant to be. Dear judy, My names jaxton, and I understand if you never want to talk to me but I guess that's the price I will pay for being the pill you just can't swallow. So dear grandma, I'm sorry god told you to stop loving the demon that I am.

I have always hid behind locked doors. Learned how to bathe in the darkness, how to love when you could not see the other person you were letting infiltrate your very being. I grew in the closet swallowing who I was forcing the truth to be hidden behind the doors and in the darkness with me. As I grew up this closet I lived in started to lighten up there were window where black holes use to be and the monsters that lived within began to form into my best friends .
I have always hid behind closed doors chanted that who I was could never be. I had become the lies I was told. I always hid behind closed doors and bathed in the darkest parts of hell where no one looked to find me.

I'm swallowing my pride about who I am for everyone I love. I'll say I'm merely just a tomboy or I'm not sure who I am. And if you tell me I can't be a boy I will swallow my name and the pronouns I prefer to let them grow in my stomach like an unborn child waiting to feel the first breath of air they will ever take. I will wear the clothes that hug my body just the right way so you can tell that I'm embracing my birth gender

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.

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

I am apprehensive to hold you for fear you will slip through my hands like the sand from the hourglass that keeps pouring out into my lungs and i long for the possibility to finally stop running from all the ghosts in my closet, but every time i come around they come out like the monkey on my back that i’ve had since i was eleven. How do you spell deep affection without saying it’s L-O-V-E? I rue the fact i cannot seem to open these infirm bones enough for you to make your forever home. I do not have the power to paint happiness across your skin, when i do i leave tracks of agony and it’s unbearable to watch you stitch yourself up after every love affair we hold against that lovely flesh of yours.
When you kiss me can you ******* past and all the puzzle pieces that have yet to be put together or do you taste a happy ever after?
My hands no longer trustworthy, i have seen people like buildings, abandoned after an adventure that didn't last long enough. Like the wind I am afraid of going unnoticed like a small thunderstorm I called  your happinessI do not want to be forgotten like that essay you just procrastinated to do, I do not want to be that failing grade that's suffocating you. If not for the metals I have dangling in front of my face you are the only razorblade I will ever let destroy me, each and ever scar will always remind me that with you my happiness was not faked. I am apprehensive to hold you because I don't know how to be someone you'll love.

The darkness was our safety , my fingertips leaving the trail of promises along your body. I had you in my arms for a night to make you feel loved and maybe that's what making love with someone feels like I've never really known if that's true or not. My hands lingered and I left my fingerprints on your body, bruises of a love we just can't understand. The evidence of that night no matter how many times you try to wash it off its still there its in your veins, your quickening breath. My body shaking trying to keep the distance of what I will do as to not make you feel used. Kisses were planted among the garden your body holds and dear god I want to go back. To let the flowers that are blooming between us graze along my skin like my lips did against yours. To make your knees weak and eyes dance with excitement . I know how to love you right so put me to the test.

She whispered "you have to stop this, you have to be the beautiful girl I know you are" I wonder if she can see me tremble or hear the sound of every piece of me built upon each other as to not completely break and yet her words roll off her tongue and straight to my shield destroying the barricade I had up to keep the world out. I can't help but wonder if shed ask me to not be myself if the roles were reversed. If I had been any manlier while growing up would they see the signs like a car crash you can't prevent? Or would they still ask me to put the clown costume on for everyone to see how feminine I can be? The shorter my hair will never deter the  jokes and comments slid into my ribcage to be born when I change like that butterfly just a little to late coming out of the cacoon. Eve was born out of the ribcage of Adam yet being the eve everyone sees I am even though I'm  Adam building people up and out of my ribcage to show their confidence like a tree sap that needs a little courage to grow

Bleeding palms blood like a river, down his arms breathing heavy broken glass inside his bones. Bad news has never felt this deadly. He will never be the daughter you want, he sobs into his pillow at night muffling the sincerity of wishing he could be what they wanted. Late nights watching transitioning videos after a year she could be taken as a man and that is all she wants. His girlfriend tells him she hopes with all her might he won't be the man he feels inside. Trent. Her tongue slithers over every letter with a distasteful feeling in her mouth. Her head shakes "no, you are Tory to me. You are her. I cannot love you if you are him" bullets fired ricochet his chest he holds as if having been stabbed multiple times with a rusted dull butter knife. Pour salt on every wound scrub with mothers perfume nightly like the prayer ritual he can't keep up with. The perfume is the closest he will ever be to being a she. He was born in the body with a girlish figure . his chest denies him the right to be called trent. 23. That's how long the statistics say I'll live to be . 23 nobody cares if your 23, maybe 21 or even by chance 22 but nobody gives a rats *** if you die at age 23. 23..... That would mean before I ever fully get to be him I will know death as a close companion. I am trent, my pronouns are confusing to you because you don't see the bigger picture. Their hands tied together like vines wrap around my mouth and whisper " keep him in" they yell selfish profanities that you are the evil one. I am trent, seventeen is such a young age to be thinking about how I will die. 23 that's how long I'm expected to live. He will never be the daughter they wanted she never existed and now she's stuck tying ace bandage around the ******* she can't seem make invisible. Ace bandage is not what this is suppose to be used for. His ribs crack and he smiles, the breath he can barely take is worth being the man he is. Whites of eyes no remaining life he will only live to be age 23 and death has already got the grasp on him. I am trent, blood spilling windpipe giving out drowning with the last words I am trent. Nobody cares if you die at age 23

Open wounds
Gasping for breath.
Dying wish never granted.
Trembling body
Lifeless eyes
This is how they all died

Falling in love while suffering with depression is basically one in the same your words never come out right and you cant get enough sleep to save your life. It was all one in the same until i was proven otherwise. He waltzed into my life and stood tall and proud he knew what he was there for and that was my heart. Slowly giving it to him made my walls come down and i was more vulnerable than i had been in the last seventeen years of my life. When i was with him it was like the nagging voice that i wasnt good enough had finally been silenced and pushed away at least for the moment. The thoughts that would push me over the edge ceased to exist when he looked into my eyes....and oh when he kissed me my whole body lit up like a crazy suprise party sending feelings i had never felt to all my nerve endings that always seemed to lead to him. I could finally breathe when id pass the park where that boy didnt take no for an answer left me, one look from him sent me spiralling into a euphoria i had never imagined was real. That was only the begining though....and when the monsters tried to pry him from my unwilling hands the floor i stood on began to shake. The one thing potentially saving me from myself was apparently no good for me. But they didnt understand the high i felt when it was just us. They just couldnt see past their jaded perspective.....and so the spiralling became a spiralling into despair and self hate....the euphoriaturned into a sadness not even a drunk could drink away...my  lungs began to tighten even more now when id pass the park.....and even think of him......he took over my life...just like depression had.

It creeps in like a cold sweat as if its a snake coiling around its prey suffocating the very last breath ill ever breathe. This will be my last goodbye. It runs through my veins like ***** and a chaser the only side effect is a few more scars. Its my invisible friend who i just cant seem to outgrow. Years of therapy a bottle of medication. Trying to find my remedy to cure this crippling sadness. The vines webbed with thorns wrap around my body making me bleed. I am no knight, i have no sword of courage no armour of love. I am just that scrawny unwanted boy no one even thinks twice about.
12a.m.  i know i should be asleep by now but the hours ahead i know all too well how they play out. Talk on the phone for an hour and 20 minutes he will fall asleep and i will still be wide awake.
1a.m.  hang up the call, worry that im a nuisance scroll through music selection. Read a bunch of quotes that somehow always relate to me.
1:30 a.m.  beg myself to just fall asleep if i dont fall asleep the monsters i use to always think were under my bed that are really in my head come out to play. Its like i am the westerner that brought a balloon to a gun fight. Funny yet somehow that is the definition of my life, always unprepared.
2:15 a.m.  sleep drenches my body like the sun lights up the sky, hopeful ill be able to sleep through the night, listen to calming music that makes my eyes droop and heart feel happy sleep has arrived
2:35 a.m.  still awake but tired shut my eyes as if there are ten pound weights on each no longer able to keep them open. So happy i got through the night with no unhappy thoughts or breakdowns. Sleep...that is where i will escape my depression.
2:59 a.m.  wake up depression is calling you to wake up like a crying newborn that just needs its mothers touch. I wish it was that simple. If a caring hand would hold onto me as i fall asleep reassuring me they will never leave. The thoughts rush into me, making me hit the floor crying out for god to make it stop.
3:10a.m.  text him, hes awake and he makes things feel okay. Worry fills you as he tells you something. He tells you hes okay now. Let out the breath you have been holding this whole time. He goes to bed. You know you should too but now your depression and all the little demons living inside your bones, inside the very heart that keeps you alive, comes out to make you feel like dying.
4:00a.m.  you realize you have six hours left to sleep. But your mind wont turn off and you just need someone anyone. Its as if you are on a ship out to see and you can no longer keep afloat, the water starts fillig rapidly as you see your life flash before your very eyes. Sleep. You just want to sleep to escape this mess.
4:06a.m. *i have given up the fight for everything. My body will be but a robots. There is no use. It is over. The fight is over and i have lost