Humanity: Raw & Unfiltered
Then, in a wine soaked haze, I realize what the worst part about this is.We are always on guard against the men in the streets. The ones who whistle while we walk. We guard against the men at the bars, whose smiles turn to snarls upon rejection. We guard against the men online whose thumbs could spell “slut” without help from their eyes. We are almost always on guard. We almost never feel safe.
I’ll never know if my mother thought that she might have had a cross dressing pre-teen son, or maybe she just thought that I was just a theatrical kid. After a quick costume change out of my denim bugle boys and into her brazier and favorite silver and turquoise jewelry, I was the most fearless little girl on the North Side of the Bronx, and that helped keep me alive.
Once he was gone…
once my world came to a screeching HALT…
you were gone with everyone else –
and it was silent.
There is a number, a precise hour, minute, second between the sun’s revolving door and the moon’s sparkly shine when the world grows quiet and lavender fields weep violet.
I hear the breath of the earth surround me
as mud bubbles pop they sound
like the tension released
between my own two tucked in lips:
the opposite of a kiss.
there is a danger to dismissing history
and we will be the price bloodied
face-down
folded over ourselves
Alive in a gilded age of silver-tongued wordsmiths
well-versed in hypocrisy and greed,
our deaths before sunset transverse transsexual hurt
I feel that I support the movements which I believe need tackling; encouraging positive images of women, challenging stereotypes and questions of female morality and sexuality, and like I always planned when I was a stroppy teenager, I tackle sexism by doing what I think I do best; writing about it.