The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

I didn’t know how to explain to her that I didn’t want to be a boy because it was easier than being a girl. I wasn’t pretending.

It was just that my girlhood was—and still is—simply, factually, incorrect

I want to lay her down on the couch, smooth my hands over her stomach, and take her apart to see her insides

I’d become like those women who go mad when faced with the power of their own bodies—when it’s harnessed to create something new against their will.

To separate how you are seen from who you are sometimes feels nigh impossible

It is only when I step back to see it all through another’s eyes that I want to unravel it and carve the meat into a new, different, more acceptable shape. The only thing that will ever matter is how others see you

I want to peel off all my skin, if only so I could be anything other than a naked body, something horrifying instead of vulnerable. Nobody looks at a pig corpse and thinks it could be made beautiful

When I see my body through Mrs. Forrester’s eyes, it’s misshapen. It’s ugly

There are lots of things my family shouldn’t have done to me

I peel at the edge of the world around the piece of statue. It comes too easily. With just a gesture, the world ripples the way a puddle would when you step into it, thrums like the bobbing of a swallowing throat

How cruel is it, that I only get to be myself as a costume? I do not get to savor the masculine cut of my clothes, or the illusion of short hair, or the fleeting joy of my skin feeling like mine. Instead, I have to worry if my boyhood is convincing enough to keep me safe.