Everyone generalizes about me, so let me tell you who I really am.
I’m a woman by soul, if not exactly body.
My parents made a mistake, but not my God eternal.
I do everything I can to not look different.
It’s not enough for me, either.
I don’t enjoy the Women’s Room.
Women are gross. We pee. Fart. Poop. Bleed.
I’m there now with the others,
To avoid men who want to hurt us.
I fought who I was from age 4 to 40.
I crawled through therapy to explain it away.
I was sure I’d be fired: I was right.
I expected to lose my family; I was wrong,
Though I almost lost them to fear: of you.
I do have doubts about transition.
I don’t want to go back, but your hate makes me wonder:
Could I have stayed cisgender and avoided the stares, the laughter?
The blood libel that labels me a groomer, a murderer?
But my transition is why I am here to ask those questions.
“You Matter” in Ohio? Clearly, we don’t.
To Republicans, I am expendable.
To independents, I am ignorable.
I break with every child about to be denied healthcare.
It will kill them, as it almost killed me.
Matt and Susan: wash your hands when you are done.
I’m tired of being sexualized by politicians with their own perversions.
Of being anything biologically but me.
I want to live an unremarkable life.
And discard the rainbow I fly to convince the closeted to survive.
I want to wake up,
In another state, another country,
no longer hopeless about how cruel we have become.
Marin Harbur
Lima
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