Everyone’s got a skeleton in their closet
but I’m still alive in here.
Everybody seems to live a life that’s honest
but mines been a lie I fear.

Well maybe I just want to be "different"
But I know that it’s not the case.
'Cause I have always been keeping to the background
Hiding my true face.

It's never going to be easier,
They'll just see me as a movie monster.
Though I'm only a fraction of the whole
It's still too hard for me to let you know that...

I'm not yet who I'm meant to be but I'll get there someday.
At the very least, I hope I do.
And that I'll still do right by you.

I am not broken, I am not confused.
No, I've always known who I am.
But nobody wants to hear that news
So I'll stay with the skeletons for now...

She was sitting there
Crying silently
Mascara flowing down
Down her broken face
Her broken fate

She was not a boy
Her truth was hidden
"You have to be a boy"
Her truth was forbidden


Secretively
She took her mother's Bindi
Lying carelessly on the bed
And wore it on her forehead
It was the only rebellion she was allowed
In a society so afraid
Of someone different from the crowd
But for the moment
It was all she needed

"Don't make the gods cry"
But what about her own tears?
The Bindi on "his" forehead
Was human civilization's greatest fear

Everybody wore a mask
She just couldn't
Or she would die
She was shakti
She was power
She was courage personified
The Bindi on her forehead
they couldn't hide

I stare into the
mirror at a body
that'll never be
home

Soaring high...beautiful, proud and bold
Feathers of red and yellow and gold
Flying high, soaring, forever free
Her only purpose, just to BE

Brave of heart, strong and true
But the day would come, she always knew
When all peace and joy and hope would die
And like Icarus, she’d fall from the sky

No longer soaring the sky so blue
Bold and beautiful, strong and true
Buried in a blanket of ashes soft and gray
Nobody wanted her on Burning Day

Yet from those ashes was she reborn
To grace the sky again next morn
Flying high, soaring, forever free
Her only purpose, just to BE

my skin is howling  
my tears descend
the pain is somehow still caged

my throat swells
my jaw tightens
the hurt must stay within

its more painful than anything I’ve ever felt
like a pack of wolves tearing my heart out
the pain is eating me

eating more than I ate for the years my dysphoria got me to starve myself

i can’t hide anymore
tear me open if you must
but tear me open in the right places

When she walked it was as though
     the wind would move her
she would flow like summer breeze
one could barely behold
the perfection – oh the ease
with which she moved

Each step was like the ballet
like Swan Lake was set afoot
in the person of her womanhood
she, like no other could

Men fell in states of blunder
and ladies shapes of awe
for none could stand before her
not one resist her call

The Mona Lisa in the flesh
a living work of art
her subtlety betrayed her
a disguise she ill could wear

Her modesty set before her
a veil that through would shine
the loveliness of her countenance
the lady so sublime

I saw her once.

It seems a silly, foolish thing: obscure
abstracted expectations heeded sure.
However, comfort found or shred in thread,
defiance! Liberation for the dead
to overthrow, reject, deny decrees
imposed from fears that freedom means disease.
Because it chokes, barbed-wire laceration
began with shouts of divine damnation,
outpours a strangled, blood-laced river with
no end—laws unaware of gender’s myth.

To them, I am a thing one can acquire.
Behind eyes worn,  I tire— Oh! How I tire
of worth and value foisted most unjust.
Disgust conceals (reveals) clandestine lust;
they loved (and also often hated) me
for what I am and what I never will be.