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.