Trans Enough ((2018 COMPAS Spoken Word Poetry Workshop) 5.18.18

I’ll wear your goddamn crop-top

Pac-man boxer briefs to match

I’ll cut my hair real short

But you don’t think it’ll last

I’ll change my name to Charlie

Sign the papers and go by “they”

I’m not searching for your approval

I’m saying I’m here to stay

Top surgery down the road

Absolutely

What’s in my pants doesn’t matter

Clearly

I won’t keep quiet

As my friends get silenced

I can’t keep quiet

Don’t need to justify it

To you

Because I am trans enough.

I am trans

I am enough

I will always be trans enough

I always have been trans enough

Yet never just enough

Because the phrase itself is a bluff

I’ll hold your Barbies

Your G.I. Joes too

I’ll hold them tight

Because I don’t have to be trans enough for you

The baby shower can still go on

but please change these decorations

a pastel purple-y mix of pink and blue

Will end my heartbreak

So let’s let these skeptics eat cake

No need for frustration

Punching of fists

Or tears on linoleum

It’s a simple explanation

I know who I am

And I know you made me numb

You can stop pinning me down

Suffocating me in these torn sheets

Stop acting like you wear a crown

Because I know you never heard consent, incomplete

I forgot how to breathe around you

Because you took my breath away

And not in the way I wanted you to

I know you heard me say STOP.

I am trans

And I am enough

I repeat this, face in hands

While you push me off the bluff.