BEING TRANS: A POEM IN FIVE ACTS
It’s a gut feeling and you want to ignore it. You want to smother
it inside your very own bones, you want to choke yourself on your own
blood and make sure nobody knows what you feel. You have blood
in your mouth and you curl your hands up into fists.
Fuck this, you say with feeling. The plants grow themselves out
of the blood in your mouth, like hyenas rearing their heads after the
body of an animal has been devoured. They twist themselves around you.
You’re a carcass, waiting to be ravaged. This is wrong but this is right,
and as right as it is, you have to keep your fucking mouth shut. A slap across
the face. Keep your fucking mouth shut. Hide everything you are from everyone
else. Hide or die, hide or die, hide or die. The consequences your parents
hold above your head hang heavily over you. Hide or be ripped away, hide or
be ripped apart, hide or be ripped. Away, apart, it doesn’t matter.
You hide away in too large t-shirts and sit in the corner of your room. Fuck this,
you say, tiredly. Let the hyenas devour the rest of you. Hide or be ripped apart,
hide or die, you’d rather let someone kill you than live like this.
You want to cry. Every second of every day, you want to cry. You want
to be proud but you just end up crying. Day in and day out, the hyenas
follow you into the sunset. If it’s not abuse here, it’s abuse there. If it’s not
abuse there, it’s abuse here. Nobody wants to call you by your name. Nobody
wants to call you. Nobody wants you.
This isn’t what life is like. You know this. You know what life tastes like. You
have felt the dirt between your fingers; you have planted happiness in your back
garden with your mother – with your mother. Your mother who loves a part of
you that is long gone, that is long dead. Your mother, who calls you the name
that she gave you at birth.
Sometimes you think she loves your name more than she does you.
Forget her. Forget this. You look at the sunset and you know that life is better
than this. You know what it was like. You forget quickly but you remember
singing songs with your friends in the hills. That’s what life is supposed to be like.
Not this. Not wanting to rip your heart out every day and feed it to the hyenas,
just so you can feel like it’s worth something, at least. That it’s useful to someone, at least. Your heart is two sizes too big because you keep forgiving everybody. You keep hiding things and forgiving and letting people stomp all over you like a herd of gazelles. Lay down. Lay down. Lay down.
Lay down and die, says your brain, but that’s not what you’re going to do. You’ll
live out of spite, if you have to. Live out of pain. Live out of the bitterness. Live
knowing that your mother will call you by the name you don’t want to be called by until the day she dies.
It’s better to die than to live a lie, right?
The only reason I don’t kill myself is because I know what name they’ll put on the tombstone.
You’ve made friends with the hyenas, now. A little bit of blood in exchange for
a little bit of feeling useful. You shake hands. Hugging is the next step, you suppose, but their fur is too matted with the remnants of your own blood. So you let it go. It
doesn’t matter if you shake hands or hug the hyenas. They’re still hyenas.
This is it, right? This is how it’s going to be. Your life expectancy is small, people
throw slurs at you in the hallway, you can’t say anything about anything and that’s just how it is, right? You shrug everything off with a smile. Bloody knuckles, split lips, who cares? You can’t fight back so you just get beat up. You can use your words but that won’t get you anywhere. You try to throw a few punches in but you’re always inferior. This is what it’s like. You’ve never known any different.
Punk rock leather jacket and fuck-all attitude, right? You figure if you don’t
wanna be a living activist stereotype with button downs and dyed hair, you’ll go
the other extreme. Why focus on anything when you’re gonna die early,
anyway?
It isn’t any better at home. Ignore everything. Your mother gets out of the car and
makes a comment or two about the rainbow news. You stuff your hands into the too small pockets of your jacket and shut the fuck up, keep your mouth closed. Ain’t nobody care what you gotta say, anyway.
You’re not punk rock. You’re not someone who doesn’t have feelings. You’re
someone who has too many feelings, like they’re all going to tumble out of your
mouth and burst out.
But this is just how it is, right?
This is what you are and you can’t change it. You don’t even know
if you want to change it anymore. You’ve lived too long with the hyenas,
so long that you’d miss their laugh if they were gone. Who the fuck said
hyenas were bad, anyway?
The realisation doesn’t whack you in the face. It creeps up, slowly,
softly, but surely. And you realise that you can’t change it. You
can’t. Try all you want. You just gotta live with this; you just gotta be this
forever, fuck everything else.
This ain’t the life, you know that. You gotta laugh with the hyenas. They’re
your friends now. They’re your friends and you know how to hug them, now. They aren’t bad, just resourceful. This ain’t the life. You gotta figure it out. You gotta change something, do something. Take off that punk rock leather jacket. It’s too big for you anyway.
trans heroes, you search up into Google. Trans heroes. Names like Marsha P.
Johnson, like Alan L. Hart pop up. Trans heroes, trans heroes, trans heroes. Kids on the internet say their names with pride; remember everything there is to know of their history. Once upon a time, you thought you’d die forgotten and alone, surrounded by only the hyenas. Now, you’re not so sure.
They didn’t want to be heroes. They just wanted to be themselves. They just did
what they wanted to do, did what was right. What’s right, anyway? What the world tells you to do? Or what your heart tells you?
You want to be a hero. Or someone. A hero, or a god, or a human, or just someone is fine, as long as some kid remembers you. As long as some kid says your name, your tangible, actual, real name with pride. As long as you can look up trans heroes into Google and see your name there, even if you don’t do anything great. Every trans person is a hero.
(The hyenas howl in agreement.)
Fuck being a hero. You want to be you. And that, in itself, is pretty fucking revolutionary.
You swear too much and you wear the trans flag on your skin. You like kids and
you want to have some of your own one day. Your mother is still in love with the
name she gave you at birth, and that’s how it is.
Pride, right? Be proud, be proud, be proud. Sometimes you wake up and you
suck at pride. Sometimes you wake up and you suck at loving yourself, at watering your cactus, at saying hi to the hyenas that don’t devour you for lunch anymore. They haven’t been hungry in ages.
Sometimes you’re bad at doing things. That’s fine. That’s how it is. Sometimes
you’re tired and you just want to put on that fucking leather jacket again and lose
yourself in times that were worse. But fuck it.
Fuck this, you say, and you mean it.
Goodbye, bloody knuckles. Goodbye, leather jacket. Goodbye, people who threw slurs at you. Goodbye, sitting in the corner at 3 AM, begging to die, begging to change, just begging and begging and begging. This is what being trans looks like. It’s pain and it’s loneliness and it’s darkness and sometimes it really, really sucks.
But it’s also making friends with the hyenas. It’s the hyenas retreating to their rocks and learning that your body is your own and this is the body you have. It’s the realisation that this is it. This is you. You know you better than anyone else and this is you. This is how it is! You’re a hero! You’re a legend! Every step you take is one for the history books!
The bad days are still there. The good days are there, too, and they increase in
number. The hyenas have always been there, too, watching and waiting throughout it all.
Goodbye, hyenas. You won’t be eating any of this body any more.