Man overboard Words crash against the back of my mind Like waves collapsing exhausted on the shore My unconscious mind battered by colliding thoughts Shredded on underwater rocks Remnants of ruminations float like scum Upon the surface of my troubled sea All the ways in which I've failed, Evident by the ship's wreck surrounding me, As I still grasp aimlessly for any sturdy surface To keep me from going under again And drowning in the inky darkness

Man Overboard
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My relationship with gender? It's complicated. When I first started asking questions What makes a boy or a girl, I was given a visceral demonstration In the middle of the night By someone I thought to trust With my questioning Response: Hard dismissal of all things "girl" Manually shifted to "tomboy" Short hair, baggy cloths, masc mask Never any pink or purple Instead, opting on green or blue Embracing male-coded hobbies, Rejecting female-coded actions Until my body began developing Then maleness felt inadequate

Biological crisis! Fighting with fatty tissue Demeaning my roundedness Hating my softness Embarrassment, overcorrection Hyper-feminized myself Experimented with makeup Removed every unwanted body hair Course reversed by love of women Awakened as a late bloomer (But first out in my class, go figure) But that didn't feel right either Identity: confused By college, I wrapped my head Around my sexuality but Gender was still elusive Tried living male for a while Tried living female for a while Both times, I felt split Foot halfway in the door, Halfway out of the house With no satisfaction Or any plan to stay in or out A binary is extremely strict My body didn't seem so inflexible And my mind definitely wasn't

Resolution: I had masc and femme days But more days were spent In some in-between state Ambiguous about it Ambivalent about it Androgynous about it Playing around with it now Stopped removing body hair Felt gender euphoria at last? In fits and spurts But "they" elated me most Finding that in between Is really where I fit in best

Genderphoria

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Self-fulfilling prophecy Gonna fuck this up Gonna fuck this all up for sure Gotta try hard not to But I know I'm gonna Gonna just fuck it up So I do everything I can To take extra care Because I am so sure I'll fuck it up I will, Fuck this up Fuck This I'm gonna fuck things up It's what they're expecting anyway Because I always fuck things up Here I go Fucking things up again By trying too damn hard Not to fuck things up again

Self-fulfilling prophecy

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Emotional conference Sitting here, numb Feelings in committee Awaiting to see which emerges first Will it be righteous anger Slamming open the door fully? Will it be deep sadness Slowly creaking it open? Will it be lonely fear Bursting through and running away? Can't say for certain So I stay in the waiting room

Emotional conference

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Flying V formation Today my heart leaps and flies Like a gaggle of gooses in a V formation Soaring high, high, higher above And with the flight-feathers of a flock How could I ever fall? And so, I fall in line and As geese, we all take our own turns Leading the flock and being Front of the V but inevitably We all let each other lead and Fall comfortably into following

Flying V formation

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Meltdown imminent Sometimes I wish I was empty-headed Instead of weaving, spiraling, twisting, screaming, crying, dying streams of consciousness wrapped around my ego so tight I am choking on the absurd I wish the faucet would stop drip drop drip drop dripping of my tears, seemingly endless, lifted directly out of the deep well of sadness, anger, fear, and guilt-shame-guilt-shame in the silt of the black water I wish the beast inside the steel cage of my ribs would stop rattling the bars, pounding against ever-increasingly harder walls that seem too small to contain it I wish the fire that was inside my stomach would quell itself and stop piling coal inside my veins to fuel its churning, churning, churning with the bellows of my lungs I wish it would all just cease

Meltdown imminent

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