A Week of Awareness

How may times do I need to utter a pronoun correction

Do my friends need to ask

“How shall we proceed, when someone erases you in public?”

When someone uses the name of a person I long since buried

The person I shed like a coat too thick for this weather.

How many times I ask?

How long before my presence is respected; is seen?

Before I stop thinking if how I presented today was worthy of the words, she/her/hers?

Worthy of what I have always been.

Is my hair not long enough?

My body too masculine?

How could I possibly be a lesbian?

Or more than a boy in a dress?

Is my concealer not doing the work of covering that I was just too tired to shave today?

That the gaff I use has worn the skin away from the very thing the world defines me by; the very thing I wish to ignore.

I am not the lover between my thighs

Nor am I the garments that admonish me yet uplift me; reshape me; affirm me.

And yet,

I am defined by this lie.

I am not defined by my love or how I see myself;

not by my courageousness to step out of social constructs of gender.

To walk in power; alignment

But rather I continue to be defined by the very system I have transcended.

By what the world chose for me.

The dread of airports, restaurants, family, friends; the world and its gaze.

The dread of being reminded that I should mourn the loss of my body, morn the name gave back

Morn the loss of those who would rather dispose of me than celebrate me.

How many times

How many times before I can just wake up and be myself?

Without fear of slander, erasure; murder.

This IS my body. This IS my name.

Say it now while I’m alive;

Say all of our names while we breathe; while we hug and kiss you; while we laugh with you.

Say them before someone who can’t bear our courage,

Crowns our names with hashtags.