Friend, you say it like I wanted this.
“To my knowledge you were born without a uterus.”
Look at me! I’m pretty now, but not without a phallus.

And you breathe now into the table.
You are in pain and to help I am unable;
and so I write, because this is a fable.

It’s hard for me to say that this is just.
Privilege shoots down right to disgust;
and so for life my jaws have shut and rust.

Because I was born a boy: femme of mind,
but not of body (god could never dare to be that kind).
And so I, stag, dream to look a hind.

But I was also born with paper skin.
My ivory organ burns quite easily, akin
to kindling that will never be called sin.

I was born third generation:
not first, not second, past the pain of relocation,
my life allowed to face boring stagnation.

My parents are professors, I am educated.
I am upper middle class, my hunger sated.
I am a hundred natural rights perpetuated.

I have been my only chains,
stuck inside a twisted brain.
To my world I’m not profane.

I don’t deserve to feel oppressed:
to feel as though my life a play regressed
upon itself–I lay my riddled head to rest.

The truth is far less comforting.

Everyone suffers.
Everyone strives.
Everyone lives.

You do not have to know another’s pain
to want to help, want to sustain,
the life they live free of disdain.


There will come a day when she falls through.
Feels her own pain in every mortal hue,
and now she will not tell you.

Not because you are not kind,
not for lack of helpful mind,
but to you, she may never be a hind.

Your mind sees her stag parts.
Shoulders, legs, jaw, not heart.
It, in the moment, is ripping her apart.

She will forget soon, forgive,
but part of her will still relive.
Moment out of time, silent missive.

It tells her to be careful, please.
You know her, recall her face with ease,
but she doesn’t tell you her heart seized.

She doesn’t tell you what she’d kill to change.