he was constantly reprimanded in elementary because his

motor mouth went from 0 to 60 in 2.3 but it was also

in elementary that

he was a she to the public eye

and the thoughts that ricocheted through his skull included

‘hey

       it wouldn’t be so bad,

if i held a girl’s hand and told her she was my favorite color’

but that was unheard of in

elementary.

 

then in middle school he put the brakes on - something

silenced him:

the realization that church made him squirm

put smoke in his stomach

because his sunday best

made him feel like a backwards mannequin.

 

one day he came home and turned his bed to tears

because he’d told his best friend that he’d give anything for a flatter chest

for an x-acto jawline

and her ridicule was violet

his least favorite color.

 

he was an unsightly geode of crystalline love

the right thing inside of the wrong thing

appalling his parents when he asked

to cut his hair like justin bieber’s  and he

heard the girl on tv tell him that he was anything but alone and the first time

that a word became magic to him

 

TRANSGENDER

 

he knew.

dropkicked the ‘e’ off his birth’s first name and

kissed his best friend whose freckles bloomed with the knowledge that

he was he and nothing less

 

but

freshman year

the unbearable disparity between his mind and people’s eyes

drove him to play with razor blades late at night

in the bathroom as

his reflections melted together

into

a

terrible

abstract

painting

 

he prayed for the lump

in his arm to be cancer and

sat on the passenger side

pleading

pleading with the universe

to send something hurtling toward

his

pathetic wrong body

 

he prayed

but he didn’t believe

 

and now he has no favorite color.