in which nothing i wear is put back in the closet

As for me,
I wear my pretty like a 5th season.

Shoulders sticking out from under the lace straps,
I wear my body like planting flowers in snow.

When I wear my body in public,
I wear it like apology.

And when I’m home, looking at my body in the mirror
is like trying to plant daisies in minefields.

I wear my body like a day-job.

I wear it like last season’s harvest
and I wish I was careful what I wished for
when I begged for rain.

I wear my body like a box in the attic.

Most if it is photographs,
most of which I cringe,
and I find it beautiful.

To be able to see your body,
without seeing yourself in it.

I’m still afraid of death but somehow
it comforts me to know that,

even as a ghost,
I lived so fiercely.

This is not my body.
But I wear it like a battleground.

And when dysphoria seizes me-
when I hear gunfire erupt from under my skin,

I dress my body like a minefield
and I wear it like a graveyard.

I wear my ghost like today.
And my body like tomorrow.

Another choked-up poem

I shouldn’t have been surprised.

I’ve always been an empty bottle clearly labeled “boy”,

but I drowned.

It all came rushing in.

When I was empty,

people nodded along whatever I said,

and now I know that its not

that they changed their minds.

They just find my overgrowth respectable enough

to take me seriously.

And this poison

feeds on me.

It is stronger than my glass walls.

It morphs me into what it thinks I should be.

It does not care that my voice cracks

whenever I see my elongated fingers,

or I tear up when I hear

what deep sounds escape the well of my throat.

I feel further and further each passing day.

This poison is like paying rent

to have a roommate.

It borrows every inch of me and always returns damaged goods.

It stretches its essence into whatever it is that stares back in the mirror.

And to think I once used to love my body.

Back when it fit.

This poison is pumped into me

and I don’t get how glass can expand

and not crack.

How no one else feels the reverberations.

I don’t get how I’m supposed to swallow all of this.

Not invited

I wrote & recorded something for International Girls’ Day. Enjoy.

There’s this little kid at my school.

Dark skin.

Tilted eyes.

Always rushing through the halls

and he likes to speak with his hands.

He’s half my size,

but once,

he patted me on the back and told me

not to worry

when a kid in my class called me a faggot.

And I thought: “Wow,

this little boy,

I would call him a grown man for his kindness,

but the phrase “grown man” has

only ever stabbed me,

has never been a compliment,

for age and gender have only ever ticked away from me,

called me late.

And this kid today went around,

poking pretty coats, long hair, and nail polish,

told my friend to go downstairs because it’s international girls’ day,

before ignoring me and rushing through the halls again.

I’m glad he didn’t touch me there and then because I’m sure

he would have only touched air

and maybe

something less.

It is international girls day but I don’t know my gender

and am still looking forward to Halloween,

something about that night reminds me of witches burned alive.

Or is it April Fool’s I’m thinking of?

Or am I still playing hide and go seek with this body,

hide and go seek with my rights,

seek my rights,

seek my rights.

My school takes photos with all its female students.

Celebration means pose for the picture-

means smile and look like you’re having fun-

means hold your books like they’re candy-

means school walls with ribbons

and people who look like confetti-

means festivities with recess that looks like a birthday,

teachers who look like fun,

girls who look like girls,

the camera that looks like a baseball bat

and I, that am sitting in the middle of this room,

looking like a pinata,

a jackass,

ridiculous in pink,

chock-full of sugar,

bullseye amid sharpshooters,

like destruction and humiliation in the middle

of what’s supposed to be a party room.

Faint pink // Pastel Survival

You can read my poem below or watch the video in which I perform it: here 🙂

You, you will find
one million ways
to tell the world
you are fragile.

And this world will
stumble upon
just as many
ways to not hear.

Spoiler alert:
You’ll be grateful
noone listened.

You, you will not feel
enough comfort to
even tiptoe ’round
the subject of your
own struggle.

Never will they know
how one argument
gives you nightmares for
days- weeks;

waking up to blood
from thrashing around
in your dream, getting
up to drink water
to drown the words you
woke up with a need
to tell the daytime
monsters.

Never will they know
how your fingertips
would often carry
the faint smell of steel-
now rust;

Never will they know
how a glass breaks in your
throat every time you hear
your own name.

how, more often than
you’d like to admit,
five year-old girls make
you feel like a corpse.

What can be decyphered
from the image of you
sitting in your room-
lit candles which smell
less the label that reads vanilla
and more like just burning,
narrating half-truths of
the spread out photo album
to imaginary
people you envy for their nonexistence,
or people you know but aren’t there?

What would they make of how
you throw out all your razors
after every relapse
only because you feel
like someone’s watching;

or how while showering
for the third time today
you caught yourself in the
midst of apologizing
to your third-grade teacher,
audibly.

You beg them to explain
how come you clap, like clap
in cafes and put on
your most blank,
most confused,
most ready to be swept away by whatever you say facade,
when really,
you’re kind of being ripped apart.

I kind of know what it is for me.

I’ve trouble speaking up,
reacting, or often
demanding respect, or
the adumbration that I am…
something?

I’m just kind of too tied up to move.

But I do have something
to bring to the table.
A stepping stone not far
from truth.

It’s hidden in the way
I say yes to your last
minute plans but am late
because I threw myself on my
knees on the hardwood floor,
only stopped when my skin
turned the blackest of blue.

And I come over to
your house and kick my leg
under the table, accidentally, while
laughing at your offensive joke.

I’ll show you the bruise then,
as if you were the one
to cause it.
As if you weren’t.

I’ll plaster this paper
to my sweaty forehead
skin
and you will get but a
wiff
of your blame as I tell
you I’m late because of
what my father did.

I’ll down shots in advance
to meeting up with you
for beer.
You will see my flushed cheeks
and you’ll be convinced
I’m a fragile thing.

I’ll only dress my skin
in the faintest cotton
candy pink,
like
you can pluck out
pieces of me
as easily
as the wind;
in the faintest cotton
candy pink
so barely differentiated from white,
it’s almost not there.
so barely differentiated from white,
it’s almost not there.
I’m almost not there,
like, if I skip one more
meal, I’ll disappear
completely.

Like transparency is triumph.
Like if I pretend

to spew my very guts out
or burn in incandescence
or effervesce anything

at each and every thing you say,
one day you’ll stop poking,
convinced that your finger
is doing the bruising.
That you are hurting me.
That your hands are punches
instead of control thread,
like a marionette,
like a puppeteer pulling me further in.

One day you’ll stop poking,
and I will still be of
only the faintest pink.
This time will be different.
There will not be any
shushed audience or dim
lights,
I will reside
in a field of white,
of canvas.
of a faint,
dim,
blank,
suggestion
of beautiful suffocation.
I will have no witnesses!
A field of white,
which I will not need to illuminate,
in which I will not need to glow
because I will be of only the faintest cotton candy pink
so barely differentiated from white,
it’s almost not there.
Almost.
You can’t kill pink so easily.

//don’t ask me about my art, it’s art for a reason//

Some days,
it’s a pebble in my shoe.

Some days,
it erupts
and I can’t even change my socks
because my toes and veins feel like
maggots
attempting to eat away my body like
a corpse
dead
of a life not mine.

Some days
are better than others,
but most are worse.

Some days I feel
brave enough to sweat voluntarily,
my eyes automatically finding
a reflective surface to thrust needles to
whatever is vacantly staring back.
Some days I go out and plaster my overgrown
hair to my forehead, divide it in two and blame
it on the sweat
and practicality.
Feign apathy when I go out for a run,
when in reality,
this happy little accident
of splitting my hair in two
is all I have.
Along with the happy little accident
of the shopkeeper last year,
“mistakenly” calling me “she”,
the taxi driver last month,
calling me “her”,
this
is
all
I
have.

And trust me,
everyday I see
the green in me
and try to dry it into white,
only because blank is easier
to turn to blue sometime soon.

And I’m begging for white,
all my shirts read MAN at the tag
which scratches at my neck only
to find me alone in a corner somewhere
and hammer me,
my shoulder blades dig into skin that I swear
feels as unfamiliar as
the face of every single person
who has stared at me this week,
grabbed me by the arm this week;
skin that is
as unfamiliar as the face which once belonged
to my best friend,
as unfamiliar as his remarks on
my body, my identity;
skin as unfamiliar as the sound of my own name.

I have nothing.

Except a few people who love me for being blank.