The sun beating down on my face,
The gentle, warm breeze.
The smell of green plant life,
the stench of fresh mulch.
The cooling drizzle of summer rain,
the essence of wet concrete.

This is what I missed.

My my, what a special little snowflake.

Why did you choose to be this way?

You chose to be different, you chose to rebel.
No binary for me!

You chose the grief, the pain.
You chose this abuse, bruised by
the verbal ferociousness, forged by physical fallacies
To be thrown out of bathrooms
because doing your business in the bathroom is abysmal.
You chose to be derided by decisive discrimination.
You chose to be murdered by misconceptions,
***** by ridiculous requirements.
You chose to be beaten, assaulted.
You chose the words I weave to weaken your will.
You chose the sacred sermons I spit at you.

You chose to be
What I find disgusting, despicable
because you chose to be what you aren't,
but I realize what I really regard you to be.

My my, what a special little bigot.

You think I chose to be this way?

You think
I chose the injuring, injustice,
the jester, the joke
the target, tortured,
This pain, my poison,
the prey, praying,
the sinner of sins so bittersweet,
So I could be "special"?

Special isn't a sacrifice of physical self
Nor the gunshots and gruesome grief
Nor even the crass comfort of a half-assed comrade.
You think I CHOSE this,
and you didn't choose
to spit and spew your sour speeches
to disperse your disgust in discrimination
to integrate your ignorance into my existence.
Or did you not choose
to deal the abuse
by your hand
yourself?

My special little bigot,
You live as you are.

So be it, if I am so "special", the special little snowflake.
Yes, we are the little snowflakes that your palm's presence melts away,
And you're that burning persistence of life
Blocking with your own self our slow, wistful descent,
As if it were futility and not of your own will.

If I am the snowflake, you are the fire.

Grieving the death of yesterday,
and the fearful beginning of a new today,

Sits the mourning dove,
perched upon its pine tree palace.

The call of the sorrowful dove;
a soft, songful lament against the dawn's awakening.

Beneath the blue jay's ballad,
countered by the crow's cackle.

The mourning of the fallen, unknown to the world.
The mourning of the lost and forgotten.

Not singing, not chirping;
Just grieving.

A world of fragile things,
where love and dreams and darkness all collide.
Even though this fragile world is tearing apart,
taunted by the shadows, I lie inside myself for hours.

Lost whispers
awaken within me,
like a lullaby,
burning deep inside of me:

"Closing your eyes to disappear,
so afraid to open your eyes.
Safe in the dark, how can you see?
Open your eyes to the light."

She beckons me,
The Goddess of Imaginary Light.
Arms outstretched, awaiting me,
high above the world below,
Shall I give in?

Frozen in my place,
safe inside myself,
I'm still a slave to these dreams.
Why must we fall apart to understand how to fly?
Maybe this time we can leave our broken world behind.

Look past the end, it's a dream.
All just a dream in the end.

I knew I didn't fit.
I knew from my expression,
and I knew from theirs.
I knew from the "she, her" and "him, he"
I knew from mirrors,
I knew from signs on bathrooms.

I knew when "woman" couldn't mean "man".
I knew from the stares, the questions;
I knew when they called me "boy",
but soon apologized.
I knew something was different,
I knew something was wrong,
I didn't know it was me.

I knew it would hurt.
I knew it would hurt you.
Your little girl, your one and only,
She isn't dead;
He's still here.

Being transgender is like this:
Everyday of your life, you have always wanted a dog.
For as long as you can remember--
even if you don't know to what extent--
you have wanted one.

You asked your parents, Santa, the easter bunny,
even the tooth fairy.
Then one day you get a dead cat for your birthday.
You say "This isn't a dog,"
But "You get what you get and don't get upset"
So you carry around and care for the dead carcass.

All sorts of people look at you,
unable to understand what you are doing.
So then one day you decide to try to make it look a bit nicer.
You wash it a bit, comb what little fur it has left,
cover the decrepit limbs.

But then you realize the futility in doing this all the time,
because you are still carrying around a dead animal.
So you continue to carry it around because you have to,
no matter how horrible it may be.

Although you are carrying around a dead and rotting cat,
you aren't a ******* cat owner;

You still want a ******* dog.

She made me think twice
I had written the end
And she tore the pages.
And now I must write it again,
Doubtful of how I wrote it before.