Borrowed/Blue, Expressed/Pressed

All of everyone talking about

Sex and gender like it’s something you

Say and do and not something

Perceived, borrowed, inherited,

Expressed, repressed, unique and generic

We all are just blue orbs of egos being

Pressed into societal norms and somehow

It’s our individual responsibility

To distinguish oneself amongst a crowd no matter how

Decidedly dangerous that might be.

Hormones don’t help me express myself they help me be

Perceived differently. I feel the exact same.

Top surgery didn’t help me express myself

A flat chest is not a statement of identity it is simply

A new network of scars, constricting and straining

It’s up to me to stretch the boundaries of how

My changes affect the way I am perceived it is

An unexpected burden, if you ask me, and

I often wonder what

Masculinity is

To the untrained eye, besides

Sexist confinements. I don’t fully understand what people mean

When they say things like

I identify as this, I identify as that–

My self identity is sadly meaningless, I suppose it is the

Driver, the direction, the course I hope to bank on however

Perception is ultimately the beach and

There is a lot of ocean in between, with many storms brewing.

I wonder what it means to identify as a man if you’re treated like a

Thing?

Lately I’ve become so blisteringly aware of my low self esteem I’ve been targeting

Anyone, everything and everyone around me, desperately trying to figure out

Who the culprit is, who is the biggest bully I need

To arrest. I’ve found

So many guilty of the crime and yet none are as guilty as

My own mind. Who is there to blame when the task at hand is

Insultingly enormous. If you only knew the extent of it.

To decide to transition into manhood

This late in life is to know that you might

Never make it, and that that’s somehow fine.

This reasoning makes no sense to me and I see so much

Irrational thought in my own poetry, but the truth is

You can’t control how others perceive you

So often times, in my lived, depressed experience:

Being transgender is some insane bullshit.

Most of society sees sex as a fact not

All the spectrum and all the color and

When you’re used to full spectrum

But everyone else is black and white, you feel

Blind and crazy most of the time.

I think this is why when I see trans people who

Don’t care about how they are perceived

I get angry and I think they’re lying.

Ain’t nobody that bold, not unless it’s your

Privilege, or your job.

Anyway, the south sucks. I need to move up.