I keep telling myself that
I'm not hiding the past
I don't even know if I'm lying to myself anymore
why is it so scary to tell someone that i was once
a girl?
I still freeze in the men's bathroom
I'm trying to tell myself I'm not a fraud
Internalized transphobia slows down the movement
how can I be proud and
so scared?
I feel like I must hate my body more
I need to not like it to justify
my identity
and my world
But I don't my body feels to delicate to hate
even if it isn't mine i don't want to make it
cry?
My body has scars that will never go away
I have a chest that is not so comfortable for a boy
Why is it so hard to say I'm trans?
I'm proud of who i am
I swear I'm not hiding
the past?

I can read you like a book
words scrawl across the page
when you make that face
eyebrows raised
Pages turn in the way you hold your body
secretive and concealed
It takes patience
to read you
its not easy
but i can read you like a book.

I'm addicted to you in the way
that i can forgot for two months
then need you like my life depends on it

I hate myself for it
but you assure me its okay
and you love me as if it were any other day

I'm so grateful
but
so scared that
you will see me how i do in a couple years.

a girl with books
wobbling as she tries to balance them
she cant be older than seven

A boy in the adult mystery section
repeating to himself
"I need a boys book not a girls book"

A mother with her two children
following her like ducklings
leaving havoc as they pass

A girl and her mom
reading aloud
in the middle of the cooking isle

A squirrel crosses the road
at the wrong         time?
We pass the squished creature
a moment of silence for
a             mistake?

But what if the squirrel jumped
into the traffic
What if the squirrel was done
ready for it to end

He was a silent squirrel
no one knew much about him
he kept to himself
But the day cam of the tragic...
        accident?

They all said goodbye to his corpse
left him gifts
for a dead squirrel may be
less lonely than
an alive squirrel.