Pouring rain, the clock struck midnight
She giggled, throwing her arms around him
Laying kisses on each other one after another
Standing under the garage roof she stated,
“I wanna kiss you in the rain but I don’t have shoes on”
With no hesitation he picked her up,
Walked out from under the roof
And kissed her in the rain,
Like they were straight out of a fairytale
She smiled and looked to the sky,
“This is why I want forever with you”
the airline lost my big red suitcase
all my clothes were in it
I was frantic
so I called my mother on her cell
I was excited
when she answered
I knew she was dressed in her pink-checked pants suit
the one she often wore when she played
with my then-three-year-old
I knew she’d help me find my suitcase
“Your small red bag,” she laughed
“It fit right into a space in the trunk!”
and I laughed with her
I lay in the deserted dark
I’m usually the one that says goodbye,
not the one that hears it.
But today I stood alone and
watched as everything I knew
walked into the distance.
The weather seemed appropriate-
switching between sunny and cloudy,
almost as if unsure how it wanted to feel.
It settled somewhere in between,
knowing what it was leaving behind,
but also knowing what it was gaining.
And I find myself not focusing
on who has said goodbye,
but those who have said
hello.
Work out the stories that teach
you how to exist. Soon.
This is your one life—
never to be lived by anyone else,
never to be repeated even by the self.
You’re old enough to know soon
is now, your story one-off.
Look at all the times you learned the rules
then broke them across your lap—
tenderness in your palms,
a prayer ready for every poem
and every tremulous storm.
Allow yourself to make sense of it all.
Your story. All that life and still more.
I want out of this fucking closet.
Another opportunity passes me by
because I’m not free to be myself.
Because I’m torn between genders.
And I’m so protective
of my female self.
I don’t want to give her to the world.
Lady Valor told me
it’s okay to be comfortable
inside the closet.
But I’m uncomfortable
in this false skin
I wear to please others.
I want to rip away the mask
and be called by my true name.
I’m tired of feeling invisible
and unbeautiful.
And everything I want
(to write, to be published, to perform, to date)
comes with that ugly hook
of being seen.
I want to scream
all these poems
and stories
about a trans girl aching for freedom,
about a bi-gender girl wanting
to be loved.
I want to stop writing safe
and lying about
what I’m working on.
By the time
all the people
whose disapproval I fear
pass away,
it will be too late to live my life.
I find freedom
in nights and weekends
and the safety of friends’ homes.
I take deep breaths in stolen moments.
I wear what feels right
when no one is watching.
I live a hidden life.
And I envy others
who have the things I want.
All the treasures
on the other side
of a price I’m not willing to pay.
I lost a silver rose
earring in the woods
once while hiking.
Another time,
I left a favorite bottle
on a rock somewhere,
forgotten a sweatshirt
on a tree limb and
even dropped a glove.
More significantly,
I shed my dread, anxiety,
and worry along the cliffs,
but I always come back with
hope, and sometimes hope
is all we have.
We carry it with us
in our pocket
like a lucky stone
rub circles along it
with our fingers
at early dawn
Keep it with us
near our heart
and pull it out
through long hours
through daily drudgery
through turbulent moments
and over mountains.
doctors forget about our souls
they treat us like machines
oil our parts
with little white pills
we often take without question
from the people we expect to have the answers
but often times they are just bandaids
not long term solutions
when we ask questions
they often answer with knowledge they don’t have
quoting their own experience
rather than statistics
so we do our own research
spend time we don’t have
to make sure these tablets we’re taking
won’t do damage to the systems in our bodies
that are already failing us
we’re not specimens waiting to be examined
in a petri dish of lab results
we’re people with souls
that need to be revitalized not just with
mango flavored electrolyte powder every four hours
but with the sun
and with the people we love
and there’s no space for that in the perfect pie charts
of the system meant to fix us
one drug at a time
Silent,
but anticipated
the sun peeks
through my window
rising
until it
disappears like
youth above
the roof, over
hanging
outside, leaving the
mountain
and the mystery I hold
secretly about you, behind.
