They call me witch because they wish
To strip away my power,
They don’t see how much work and how much pain
It takes to build that power up every
single
day.
When you are a transwoman and your very flesh crawls
At the sight of your body,
The hair you never wanted,
The sound of the bass in your voice that they hear as a tell tale sign
That somehow you aren’t who you say you are,
When you are a transwoman you spend every morning,
Every day
Building yourself back up.
Makeup is my Glamour,
My woven spell of confidence
And if they could read the words behind my painted lips
They would know that I’m unhappy.
The light that I shine when I’m walking in the world,
their world,
The “real” world,
Is too often a mirage,
An illusion,
A hologram,
A mere watercolor that I wash off each night when I get home.
I’m not comfortable here.
I’m not welcome here.
And I can see that in every stranger’s eyes,
The way their mouths turn down
And all around me are looks of confusion,
“Are you a boy or a girl?”
And I just want to smear the colors on my face away and scream,
“I am she! I am woman!
I have shed my skin more times than you will ever know!
I am not some pretty little doll who has it all,
Who doesn’t have to worry about a thing.
I am a bundle of nerves masquerading as human,
I am a volcano pretending to be dormant when really
I could blow at any minute,
Spew forth my insecurities and the intricacies of the pain that is
Dysphoria.”
I want to tell them.
I want them to feel what I feel,
How alien it is to be in the body that I never asked for
And to have to pretend it’s okay every day.
I want them to understand that it is normal for me to take
One
Two
Sometimes Three hours to get ready for the day.
You don’t know the meaning of the phrase “taking forever”
Until you have to stare at the body you’re maintaining,
Drag a razor over the hair you once tried to light on fire,
Slather primer, concealer, and foundation over your
Face,
Your neck,
Your chest,
Hide every little thing that might make someone suspect
That you don’t naturally have smooth skin.
You don’t know confusion until you are staring,
Glaring,
Crying at your penis,
Willing it to turn itself inside out because
Maybe then they would get it,
Maybe then that guy could love you,
Maybe then they wouldn’t stop you from peeing
or fixing your makeup
In a goddamn public bathroom.
They call me evil...
But evil is denying someone
Who already tried not once,
Not twice,
But four times
To erase themselves from existence
the right to still be alive.
Evil is saying that I am a pervert in disguise
When I’ve been assaulted and approached by guys
So lost in their male privilege that they had’
The audacity to claim that they could own me.
They call me witch,
And it’s true,
there’s magic in my blood,
My veins that I once considered dragging a knife across
Burn so bright and hot
With such intensity that I cannot stop moving,
I cannot rest,
i cannot break down in peace
Because there is so much work to do.
My power is in my will to live,
Something I didn’t even know I had until
That fourth attempt failed, too.
I
Am
She.
I
Am
Woman.
And damn it,
I am alive.
~ Cherry Bone, 5/18/2016, 4:22 am