What would you change if you could live life over?
What does love feel like to you?
Who do you see when you look in the mirror?
Why do people take each other for granted?
Do you wonder who I really am when nobody is looking?
Do you ever just stare at the ceiling and contemplate what it means to exist?
Sometimes I lay on the bare floor, stare at the ceiling and just absorb the silence,
Thinking I was plopped into this society by mistake- like god in halos, towering over the planet, hastily flicked me off his middle finger and I plummeted through the twilight zone
And this isn’t really the life I should be living.
Sometimes I say nothing because I can’t articulate how deeply I feel. Sometimes I don’t even understand how I feel because everything that exists says I’m not supposed to feel this way.
Born “a girl” but actually a boy – who could understand that if I don’t even understand myself?
When I was little, I stole a tiny plastic dinosaur from the store but told you I found it. Tough conch seashell, whispering ocean melodies, with guilty insides, I just wanted to be loved.
I want to run up to you and give you a huge bear hug like I did as a kid.
The pull of a parking brake. Running, bare feet burns on carpet. “Dad is home!” we rejoiced. Dad’s sweaty because the car AC stopped working but we never want to let go.
Hugs, smothered in reservation look different now. Strangers with a precious past of not being strangers.
If I was no longer here tomorrow, would you have regrets?
Would you be left with a thousand questions and few answers?
If you had to tell people I was gone, how would you describe me? Would gender, names, pronouns, and fear matter?
Would your own pride or avoidance of discomfort deserve as much protection as you thought?
Would you cry and wonder why all those times you had tried so hard not to cry?
Translating Transgender 