‘Girl’ — A poem
TWs: Self-misgendering and periods
I am a man who no longer recognised the little girl he used to be in photos of the past.
I am a man who sees the dead girl he used to be, the ‘stranger’ his parents used to love, but now merely regard him as a stranger they tolerate.
I am a man who bleeds out of himself every month, carrying physical, internal battle scars he carries with a mixture of pride and shame, with thoughts that sometimes don’t feel like his own, disturbing his mental peace, terrorising him with transphobia and words of narrow-minded people lingering in his past.
I am the same boy trying to come to terms with the past false personae of ‘girl’ he used to be; the personae doctors, society and family forced onto him at birth without letting him develop his own voice.
I am a young man still invisible by society, the one who lobs him off as a dead ‘woman’ it still lies to itself with because society was never founded on truth, sincerity and integrity to fight for all to begin with.
I am still the same young man struggling to reconcile with his younger girl self, as ‘girlhood’ was something he used to see as a ‘home’ to him… But now, it’s not his home anymore… It’s something he still needs to still let go, in order to move on with his journey of becoming a king.
I am still that small ‘little girl’ on my way to become a king… A king who fights his hardest for acceptance, self-kindness, intersectional, anarchist, feminist and trans liberation, and self-compassion that he deserves.
I am not a ‘she’ and never will be ‘her’… For I am a ‘he’ and a ‘they’ fighting tirelessly to be himself, to be a free man who survived his personal and social hells, and their own soldier who’d rather die a warrior than as a ‘stranger’ making themself palatable, with other strangers speaking the deceased name of the stranger at his funeral.
I am a man.
My own man.
A gentlesir named Raven.