yearning poet

twenty something trans man banned from eden

[wildeesque]

putting a face to the name of the blog.

[wildeesque]

It rained again. The last four days, it poured rain like bullets and flooded the sidewalks and gutters of my street. I sat downtown in the middle of the night waiting for the bus in the pouring rain, and I reveled in the familiar beat of each drop against my body. I slept with my window open and a lullaby upon my leaking skylight.

This morning, I woke to smoke. In my lungs, in my room, in the sky. Not from my home or anyone nearby, not enough for anyone else to notice yet, but I saw it. What could be so dry to still burn after four days of heavy rain?

[bogboy-nblm]

Okay imagine we're 3 boys in love, with each other, we are gay and in a polyam relationship <3

[wildeesque]

i remember being a child, as early as five or six, wanting to be like the boys. cut my hair short and play soccer or basketball or whatever we had that day in gym class. i remember praying to a god i didn't understand yet that i would wake up with a penis and each morning waking up as disappointed as last time. i remember staring into the mens department while forced to dress shop for my mother's wedding. i remember being trans from a very young age. i came out the first time at twelve, technically. my best friend moved away and when we spoke online, i told her i wanted to be a boy. she called my dylan from that day on, until we lost contact. no one else knew. i came out again in my sophomore year of high school after getting out of a restricting relationship, and used the name aether. i pulled the closet doors shut on myself when he wanted me back. i came out as nonbinary six months before coming out once and for all- i went by danny, or sometimes dane. i shaved my head when i couldn't afford a haircut. ive always known who i am- i was never a woman. nothing will ever change that.

[wildeesque]

i wish more people in my life understood what i mean when i say i want to start over. i tell them my shoulders ache after binding from wake to bed and that im tired of hearing the name someone else gave me, and they nod along and tell my where they're sore but they'll never feel it in their heart the way i do. i dream of healed scars across my chest and a legal name change and a city where no one has ever known me, but how can i leave behind everyone who thinks they do right now?

[wildeesque]

Have you ever met someone and known right away that this person will either be your salvation, or the universe will use them to exact revenge for your wrongs?

This boy with icey eyes that sweep me off the floor, he's really something. I could listen to this boy ramble and stumble over his words for hours and never once would my mind wander from whatever topic he had chosen. This boy who eats his strawberries top first, leaf and all, may just have stolen my heart and I don't want it back. He leaves our city soon and these streets will miss him but not the way I'll miss him, with an ache in my bones and a pull in my heart to follow him. This boy could be everything, if the universe forgives me.

[wildeesque]

hey! if you've read all my posts, then you know im a trans man, and a gay one at that! in addition to that, im mentally ill. I moved into my biological fathers house a few months ago, but by December I need to move back out, which is all fine and dandy, except that i live in an incredibly expensive city and don't get paid a living wage.

while i don't have much to offer, if you're willing and able to donate i can write you a poem or short story about a topic of your choosing or will sell nsft content!

my PayPal is [email protected], and I'll update when I make a venmo and/or cashapp! anything helps to keep another queer person off the streets.

[wildeesque]

when the poet falls for the artist who creates masterpieces with pencil and paper, what more can he do but write love songs and sonnets and stories of what one day could be memory; what he prays will one day be memory?

i knew you once when i was young and didn't yet know myself and my heart would leap when i would see you and it leaps again at the sound of your voice, skips a beat each time you laugh and races when you speak my name.

i knew you once and now again and my body craves to feel yours against mine, skin on skin and fingers intertwined and the brush of your beard against my chest as you lay your head to rest and in the moment all i would ask is to remain safe together forever, just yourself and i-

and i will write a thousand poems and fill endless pages if that is how you'll fall for me as i have begun to fall for you, and all i ask in return is a kiss and a picture of the future you desire so i can write your dreams into plans into reality one day.

one day soon you will leave town and i will too and all i can hope is that these spoken words and late night calls and hide and seek on the switch can be enough to keep my name on your mind, but if your thoughts should be occupied by another one day, i pray you believe me when i say i am happy as long as you are smiling and safe.

[wildeesque]

caffeine overdose at midnight, wake for work eight hours later. black coffee killing, switch to caffeine in a can to die a little faster; six hundred milligrams in an hour six hundred more two hours before- maybe ive got a death wish or maybe im an addict again:

just like that my mind is back in a hospital bed with a cocktail of chaos and pills in my stomach and my bestfriends next door with a cocaine overdose and just like that im sober for a month and just like that im overdosing again and just like that im too drunk to walk and just like that im screaming at the stars and cursing god and just like that-

just like that, ive got my six month chip from narcotics anonymous but theres no anonymity amongst these narcotics i still hide in my room tucked as bookmarks in novels ive never read, too busy trying to fulfill a main character god as a victim complex and living through death each morning, bottles in a backpack and xanax back on my tongue.

flash forward three years, living clean and serene and a bit insane trying to keep safe in a city of cocaine and heroine and liquor shops everywhere you look, addicted to caffeine and nicotine but at least I know I'll survive these overdoses and withdrawals.

[wildeesque]

My little brother, who will not be named for privacy reasons, is trans too. He's entering ninth grade at a catholic school where he still has to wear the female uniform- he's not out yet, to anyone but me and my siblings.

My oldest sister calls herself a demigirl. She's panromantic and demisexual. She's out to everyone, technically, but she never bothers to correct or remind someone if they forget.

My sister, the one just two years beneath me, is genderfluid and bisexual. She flirts shamelessly with her best friend- and with mine, for that matter. She hangs my old bi pride flag from before i knew i was gay so confidently.

My last sister, older than me but not the oldest, is cisgender and heterosexual. She's in a relationship with a man who is also cisgender and heterosexual.

My father always wanted sons, but... maybe not like this. I believe that whatever deity prepared my brother and I for this lifetime knew that he would raise us into a life of toxic masculinity if we we're born the way we identify: they saved us from that curse with another.

[wildeesque]

When you think about the gay community and especially gay men, your first thought often isn't the issues around hookup culture or the rampant pedophilia, but the longer you're a queer man in the community the more you see it. Grindr allows men the age of my grandfather to pursue boys who have only just turned eighteen, queer boys who haven't even experienced a healthy relationship with another man. Men with smaller bodies who look younger being told their body type looks better hairless in attempts to make them look even younger. Being a queer person comes with so much fear from outside of the community that we often forget the dangers we still need to protect ourself and others from.

[wildeesque]

one day, i will have to beg my own mother, who carried me nine months and raised me dozens more, to say my name and not the one on my birth certificate, the chosen name i boast with pride but she hides and pretends she doesn't hear my sisters use- i will have to beg my own mother to say her only son's name and not because she doesn't know it but because she will not use it and one day i will have the money to move away from this city she resides in and she will choose the fork of the road that i follow if, no, when, she refuses to say my name.

one day, i will leave the roads i know in the neighborhood i was raised in, a part of a city i was born in that never knew me, no more than my own mother did. i will finally grow my garden in the yard of a home i have made with those i love, who love me and use my name with the same pride i use it with, and i will finally be able to breath. perhaps ill build the home with the man i recently reconnected with after nearly five years, or perhaps it will be with the couple wanting me to made that duo a triad or perhaps i have not yet who that home will be made with, but i know that home will stand on a foundation of chosen names shouted out with pride.

[wildeesque]

when i call myself queer, i don't mean queer as in watered down to fit cishet tastes, i mean:

queer as in not your token gay or your gay best friend,

queer as in more bite than bark and proudly so,

queer as in the only thing you need to know about is the pepper pray and switchblade in my pocket from years of fear of the streets at night,

queer as in loud and proud and shouting out fuck you.

my identity is not water color so diluted you'd never know it's there without being told, my identity is spray paint on city walls that makes you wonder how it got there,

my identity is drag shows and men kissing men with passion,

my identity is not going to taste sweet in your mouth,

my identity is sour and bitter and bites back harder.

i do not exist to fit within the confines of boxes drawn by the hands of cishet bigots dreaming of crossing out my life, i exist at riots and rallies and pride parades along side allies; i exist in strength and pride earned by bricks thrown and i will not be silenced:

my trans body deserves to occupy space in any situation and my gay heart deserves to beat without fear.

[wildeesque]

ive got what i believe is a date today. the two cutest men in a relationship want to add a third and make it a polycule, and i adore them both- so why do i feel so guilty? do you think i still love my ex? or maybe i believe i don't deserve to be loved? i pray you don't agree with my self loathing. these men- one almost a bear, a cis man with more confidence than i have ever seen, and the other a trans man just as i am- give off nothing just feelings of trust and respect and desire but yet i still feel as though i ought to turn them right around and shout to run from me. i truly hope it all goes well- send me positivity, if you feel so helpful.

[wildeesque]

i wish it would rain again. i wish the street would flood and the yard would cover with puddles. i wish my knees would buckle under the weight of my clothing soaked through and through. i wish the clouds covered the sky in shades of grey and no light could pass through. i wish the beating of each drop on the roof of my house would lull me to sleep for once. i wish the garden would be fully watered, saturated completely to the deepest roots. i wish i felt whole again.

[wildeesque]

as ive told you, im a trans man. i came out to my family a few months ago, and my mother reacted so poorly i willingly moved into the home of my very distant and essentially negligent father. this week, ive been staying at my mother's house where i was raised and have been privy to hearing the way she actually talks about me and it's made me realize that since i told her, she hasn't once addressed me as her son- she just calls me her child now. she doesn't use my name unless someone else is around as if she feels the need to flaunt her supposed allyship. she handles the pronouns of others in her life properly; namely by using them. i don't quite grasp why she can't do the same for the son she birthed and raised and claims to love.

[wildeesque]

i implore you: consider yourself an anomaly. do not ever let a single soul simplify the multitudes within your mind, my dear. you have been a million people since you were born and you will continue to be a million more. there is no will stronger than your own when it comes to your own identity, and you are free to choose a new name each waking day or remain content with your sameness until your dying breath. every aspect of your existence belongs to you; revel in the consequences of your actions! absorb the energy of the positive outcomes and learn from the negatives, and then move on to the next! be the ripple in the water that changes everything; be your own personal butterfly effect. you may feel chained by this or that or those or them but just promise me you'll continue to breath steadily and hold your head up high even in the lowest crevices and highest waters of what life may bring. you may not have consented to being brought into this lifetime but you exist to make the most of the cards you are dealt- just remember you don't have to play the same game as those at your table.

you are mystery and beauty and strength and weakness and faith and pride and love and you deserve to be your own hero. no villain will conquer you if you find victory in every step.