falling in love with ideas of people

i keep falling in love with ideas of people rather than people themselves. i make people into who and what i need them to be in order to feel complete. there are many things i feel alone in doing (but this is not one of them). sometimes i scratch out the words of love stories and replace it with, "SHE WAS LONELY / SO SHE FELL IN LOVE / THE END." when i hear people tell stories about "how they first met" i hear them talk about the first date (not the desperation), the first kiss (not the fear of dying alone). i wish that people could be more honest about how they gave up -- the compromises they made to ensure that they would not die alone. i wish people could be more honest about the fear of dying alone. i wish that every date didn't feel like negotiating a life insurance policy. i want to hear love stories about compromise: how he was not handsome, how she was not compassionate, but how he was sturdy -- how his hands made you feel safe enough to go outside again. this is why i do not understand why romantic comedies are put in a different section than horror films. isn't there something alarming about a world that boils down to LOVE OR DIE? isn't there something terrifying about a world that separates us so deeply from one another that when we kiss it feels like the first time we are gasping air? as if we were drowning? maybe that is why we call it *falling* *in* love, as if love is an idea we fall into to the point that we are submerged and cannot escape. i don't want to have to fall in order to rise. i said: i do not want to have to fall in order to rise.

sometimes the world feels so overwhelming and cruel that i find myself running back to the ocean, find myself screaming, "I CAN BREATHE UNDER WATER." sometimes i need to believe in the impossible in order to survive.

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feelings are real

i believe that feelings are real and substantive. i believe many of our big words and politics and ideas can be distilled down to, "i am hurt." i am inspired most by people who are fluent in the language of hurt -- people who have the language and skills to navigate complex feelings with sincerity and conviction, people who understand and respect that we do not always move from reason, but often from pain. i am most impressed by people who can process jealousy and loneliness and fear. i wish we could take off work to deal with heartbreak. i wish we could understand work as another form of heartbreak. i often look forward to the debrief of an event more than the event itself. i think "how are you?" is simultaneously one of the most beautiful and tragic questions in the world: the promise of engagement, the reality of ennui. i hate the way we are required to cleave ourselves from our feelings in order to be regarded as legitimate. i hate that we are celebrated for doing this. i believe that there is a bruise there -- a deep and sustained grief that lives in the space between what we feel and what are able to say. that's why it is often hard for me to tell the difference between a mouth and a gaping wound, a word and a drop of blood, a belief and a funeral.

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the biography of pink

how do you write the biography of a color?

a long time ago: pink was born. 
pink had lots of friends.
then pink was taken hostage
got a life-sentence, had to serve it in this
foreign land called “gender”

how do you write a romance novel about a color?
is the color the protagonist or the villain? does the color love you back?

at age 2 i refused to wear anything but pink
by age 11 i stopped.
substituted the floral and lisa frank for a pair of grey slacks.
the thing is: i was desi. which meant my mom didn’t let me near Hot Topic
which meant the closest i was permitted to goth was a pair of grey dress shoes,
slacks, and a knit sweater,
from spelling bee to blasting Evanescence in my room,
i was ready for anything

how do you host a funeral for a color? 
where does it take place? was it when they pushed you down?
was it when they called you a faggot? was it when you feared for your life?
not only from their hands, but yours? was it when you
began to fear everything you used to love? is that when it died, the color?
when you feared everything you used to love
?

these days i still fear everything i used to love.
see the magazines say “girl power” wonder
what kind of a girl does pink love? 
what kind of girl does pink punish?

wonder when does their romance novel become
our horror film?

want to shout at the feminists but don’t know how:
the only pink i was allowed to keep was the one in my mouth
so i used it so much at some point it became photo studio
full of negatives i’m still trying to process
every time i speak about it a couple of old polaroids come out
of a boy wearing pink, a girl wearing blue, 
a body before the storm:
puberty OR a natural disaster
?

it’s not that i wanted to be a girl
i wanted to be pink.

it’s not that i wanted to be fragile,
i wanted permission to be fragile

it’s not that i wanted to be weak,
i wanted to be offered help.

at my funeral make sure they dress me in a pink birthday dress,
frilly and superfluous.
lower me down, 
watch me
come to life.


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smile

to the person who gave me a thumbs up in union square: i don't know who you are but i swear in that moment i wanted to write a thousand love letters to you, wanted to drop a banner down the Empire State Building saying "THANK YOU STRANGER, I AM HOME," wanted to run over and tell you that I have been running from something from a long time but you finally gave me permission to rest. it was almost as if you understood this daily marathon: how fatigued it leaves me, how i want so badly to give up, how bruised my spirit has become. it was almost as if you knew that i could not do this alone. i have been struggling to find the language to describe what it feels like to have your heart broken by a stranger: how one word can erase an entire collection of poetry. but what you reminded me on that afternoon was that that which can destroy you also has the potential to dignify you. thank you for sustaining my dignity. thank you for teaching me the opposite of heart break. i wanted to let you know that i made it back home safe. and i have been trying to find your smile in the crowd ever since.

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lazy

when cis women
tell me to shave "if i want to look like a 'real' woman" 
i remember
that men are so lazy
they make women
do the work
of patriarchy
for them. 

i smile back. 
say: "no thank you!" by which i mean: 
what could be more real than this?

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man in a dress

i might be a man in a dress,
but i am also a woman in pants.

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sticks & stones

“sticks & stones may break my bones
but words will never hurt me.”

to the man who stopped in his tracks,
turned around and walked up to me said,
“you are disgusting!”

i ran down the stairs to the train to get away from you but i met another man with a different word but the same stare so i kept on running back to my childhood
where i learned that if you
repeat a lie over and over again
at some point the familiarity
makes you begin to think it’s true

“sticks & stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”

thank you, stranger on the street
for teaching me the difference between familiar and true

how foolish i was to think it was true,

your word versus my body
your world versus my [        ]
who wins?

sticks & stones may break
my bones but words will disappear them
will make you believe it never happened
will write a story about an incident on 14 street
that everyone saw and no one saw at the same time

what happened to him/her/them/it?
(too ambitious)

what was him/her/them/it?

why couldn’t “he” have worn shorts instead?

why couldn’t “he” have kept that at home?

why couldn’t “he” have loved “himself” harder?

believed in “himself” more? held “his” head high?

envy the stick. 
envy the stone. 
envy the proof.

how can we win when they control the word?
(too ambitious)

how can we live when they control the word?
(too ambitious)

how can we exist when they control the word?

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the last laugh

to the four trans women who pointed and laughed at me on W19th street saying
“what the fuck do you think you are doing?”

i wonder:
how does it feel like to be on the other side of the joke for once?

is that what we are fighting for, to be on the other side of the joke?

would you believe me if i told you
 this morning i looked at the mirror and asked myself the same question:
“what are you doing?”

the thing about power is that it will make something that feels so familiar
look so strange.

i understand.

when i started my transition it felt like something i had already been doing my entire life: erasing myself in order to fit in.

i am sorry for the deep voice.
i am sorry for the body hair.
i am sorry for the wide shoulders.

at what point does femininity become synonymous with apology?

i am sorry for all of the people in the world who mistook your prodigy for parody:
you who mastered the art of giving birth to yourself when they simply could not.

i am sorry but i was doing nothing but standing here on the street.

i wonder when they see us seeing ourselves like this, 

who gets the last laugh?


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i am used to this

to the dozens of people who stared at my crotch all day,
pointing and laughing

i wanted to tell you how familiar i am with this scenario:

your eyes,
my body.

your finger,
my gender.

sometimes i wonder if i would have a body if you didn’t want something to look at.

like when the doctor looked between my legs and said this is what i know (gender) 
like when the lover looked between my legs and said this is what i want (gender)

there is a history to this. 

if you think that i am strange and terrifying
i want you instead to consider
how frightening a world is
that encourages hundreds of thousands of people to
scrutinize my genitalia,
make a spectator sport out of it.

there is a history to this. 

25 years ago a “doctor”
told my mother i was a “boy”
because i had a “penis” 

because some other man told him that he was a “scientist”
and he misheard, called himself “god.”

but what he forgot to tell her is
he put a mirror between my legs.
and people have been looking at themselves
through me
ever since.

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a historic tradition

To the man who called me a faggot on the way home: 
thank you for your honesty. 

There is something validating about being harassed during Pride weekend in New York City. 
Thank you for making explicit what they won’t say tomorrow. 

Tomorrow these streets will be filled with thousands of people celebrating big words like “victory” and “equality,” 
and other words that eventually lose their meaning
when you hear them on repeat like a radio anthem struggling to remain relevant. 

I understand: 
in a world where we are told that we have everything
but still feel like we have nothing, 
words take on the gravity of incantations. 

Maybe if we say “love wins” over and over again we will get over our last ex. 

Maybe if we say “proud” over and over again we will forget the loneliness tattooed on the back of our throats, the aftertaste burning like mouthwash for years. 

Maybe if you say “faggot” over and over again you will make yourself a man. 

Did you know man — I mean, puddle of words on the street I almost slipped on the way home — that Pride was started by trans people? 

Did you know man — I mean, fairytale told so many times it became history — that they will tell me tomorrow that I am more equal than ever before? 

There are few things I am proud of these days, 
but I have to say I am proud of you for saying what they won’t admit: 

that you are afraid of me, 
that you will spend the rest of your life marching away from the me inside you, 
that you’d rather I disappear like the setting sun in your voice, 
that I do not belong. 

There is something validating about being trans and harassed during Pride weekend in New York City. 

This is a historic tradition. 
Every day is a fucking march.

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A Love Letter to GNC and Nonbinary People

to all the nonbinary and gender non-conforming people out there: i am sorry that the world continues to define us by our absence. as if all we are is a refusal, a protest, a rejection. there is nothing lacking about you, there is nothing insufficient about you. even when so many of us have tried so hard for so long to escape gender we always have to be defined in relation to it, like a shard of glass stuck in a foot. as if escaping from gender norms is a form of negativity, and not a form of possibility. thank you for the new (and old) worlds and possibilities you are creating with your survival. thank you for your creation, for your imagination, for your continual rebirthing. i hope that one day the world will acknowledge our contributions and not just our departures.

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