Loneliness/Pacing
Here’s some other shit I don’t expect anyone
Who hasn’t been there to understand, but again
I used to be a lady now I’m a man.
It’s got nothing to do with how I felt
Or who I am
Just the circumstance.
No other factors I used to be
Treated as a woman now I’m
Treated as a man. When I was in between
I was just a queer question mark labeled
Other, between, nothing
A place I often linger and I’ve spent
Enough time between realms to start decorating
Get a teapot and start growing.
I don’t think it has anything to do
With me or how I see myself
To be transgender
It’s quite literally a process I started
In my late twenties.
I was born masculine I expressed
He/him and I wasn’t lucky enough to have
Parents that could understand.
I don’t think that means
I was always a man I think that means
I was a man trapped in a woman’s life
With a woman’s body and a woman’s perspective and
I continue to have all of these things
Even after “passing” as him
The only real difference is the treatment
I receive from other people
The treatment
So many cis people insist
Doesn’t really exist and yet also
Simultaneously insisting that
Trans people and the sexes are
So immutable that the
Boundary between the sexes
Must be respected— the same boundary
That they insist
Doesn’t exist
When the fence hoppers start talking about
The difference. Alas
It’s fucking crazy, I read somewhere recently
That loneliness
Isn’t cured by company— but the
Loneliness only eases
When you are seen
For who you truly are, and
As a trans man I really, really felt that
I was lonely in my own body
For years until finally I found the courage
To talk to myself about
The guy in the corner who kept pacing
Pacing and pacing and pacing until he
Ran the floors down ready
To come out.
I don’t know if that means
I was always him but I do know
He never shut up.