I am not a boy

I am not a girl.

Declarations both equally true,

Though it would be a lie to say 

They were equally brave.

One was proclaimed since before I was born,

And the other is still denied.

I have been lucky, in so many ways

Protected from denial’s bite.

But it lurks still;

A constant haunting.

I don’t believe in ghosts,

But I am still followed by a spector, 

Reflected in eyes and mirrors, 

Of a woman who never lived. 

I channel her through my skin 

Sometimes, to make it easier

For the strangers who see an apparition

Instead of me.  

How can I say that ghosts don’t haunt us,

When my whole life has been fighting possession?

Can I ever be free,

Of the ghosts of myselves?

The weight, 

Of long-lived expectations and lives never lead, 

That may never truly die.

Which of us is supernatural,

when what is supposed to be natural 

Feels anything but? 

When will we be free,

From the constructions around us,

That build us and limit us?

What is freedom, generalized to everyone?

When I try to layer everyone’s experiences together

The details and focus are lost,

Each life losing its sharp corners.

These are the haunting grounds.

Another’s story may only imitate life when passing from my lips, 

But even as it feeds this fog is so much more forgiving

Than putting words to everything inside me.

Cutting out the lines of my own heart

Gives no freedom for easy mistakes.

Do you want freedom from choice, 

Or freedom to choose? 

Is it freedom from pain,

To tell yourself it doesn’t hurt? 

What does it mean to determine my future,

When all I have to build on is the past?

What is it to find life and meaning in the backdrop,

Of society and possibility and bodies 

Too fragile to ever be certain?

I catch glimpses of my answers

In a clipper buzzing against my skull,

In a pale scar flat across my ribs.

I never needed to be reborn to shape myself.

My head and chest can be cut free of dead weight, 

The unliving put to rest to make way for life. 

Real to the touch, I am finally released,

From nature and society,

To become me.