Facism Rises, Having Not Been Put Down. Like Hot Air In Feverish Men’s Chests, Pounding Their Rib Cage

I fear looking into my adult eyes and not recognizing myself.

I’m trying to hold onto myself.

Rushing water.

I can’t remember what I came out here for.

Rain coming down.

I wonder if my mascara is running.

Wind pushing.

But I can’t bother to wipe my face if it is.

I want to change.

You can.

But I am afraid.

You ought to be.

I can't change.

Yes you can.

My legs are shaking. My feet are stuck in the ground.

Unstick them. Walk. Move. Change. Now!

Now?

Now.

Twilight miss me when I’m gone, bleed my shadow ‘til it’s grown.

Light don’t follow where I go, my face anew you’ll never know.

Sincerity is the blood held in by the knife in your chest. It feels too much like dying to be honest.

I reel back from the sunlight every time it caresses my cold skin, cooing in vein for me to love it back. Nothing can bring me to it. I have been burned before. I have been honest and I have been present and I have walked in the damnation of the daylight and I will not make that mistake again.

I will make it again. I will make it again. If only to see the sky, I will make the awful trek from hidden to known, again.

The candyfolk though sweet in stature were bitter hearted, something was very rotten about them. Though that didn’t stop them from whittling each other down with their tongues. Hungry, constantly. This place I’ve fallen into, it must be hell. Or if they taste well enough, a very brief heaven, and then purgatory.

I was 12 the first time I was catcalled. A middle school boy I’d never met found his eyes lingering on the hem of my school uniform’s skirt. I wish I’d worn the long navy blue pants instead. I wish I’d worn a cock and balls as well to keep more boy’s eyes far away from me. But there was no way for me to avoid the screaming missile of womanhood. All I could do was listen to my girlhood ripping itself out of my fingers; my fingers that used to hold dolls now holding my tongue. A brutal silence I wore as woolen armor to protect me, and enrage me all the same with its intrepid itch. I shouldn’t have had to be quiet in the face of boys lusting after me, so eager to pursue manhood that they mutilate my girlhood. It shouldn’t have been taken from me by someone who used to see me as a cooties carrier, or on good days, a friend. I can barely remember all that they said now, but I cannot shake the feeling their nasty words gave me. I shouldn’t have had to understand what it meant to be a woman before I bled. But the world is not kind to its creators. Every foul mouthed boy crawled his way out of a woman, only to seek another to whittle down into a Venus doll. The boy ogled me alongside my two friends. He too, was not alone. He asked his friend toddling alongside him with an audacious voice which of us they preferred. “I like the tall one,” he said as if choosing flowers to pick from the ground. An act of collection, of killing the thing you covet. My friend piped up and said, “we’re not objects on a shelf,” but I still felt their eyes burning into our backsides. The boy and his friends spat words at us under their breath that I cannot remember, and we walked into the middle school gates feeling heavier than before. Unwillingly we were no longer school girls, but vessels of sexuality tempting men and exciting boys. I felt my crotch turn from a place I peed from to an open wound. I felt my skin tighten, I was trapped in a budding teen girl’s body when I yearned to keep my childhood just a little bit longer. I was 12 the day before. But in a matter of sentences I was dragged into womanhood, and I lamented having known girlhood at all.

-diary of a former girl

You wouldn’t understand it, you aren’t a mimic. I miss crawling into other people’s skin because I feel more comfortable there. Sir John of Kistchire’s outrageous ski slope nose and eyebrows so furry birds mistake them for caterpillars, or Miss Browden’s pursed cherry red lips clinging for dear life at the end of her chin; they feel like second homes to me.

Why can’t you just be yourself?

I told you, you wouldn’t understand. I can be outrageous as Sir John when I’m him, I can be as persnickety and secretive as Miss Browden when I’m her. When I’m just, me, I’m. I’m nothing.

Most people don’t need a wardrobe of skins to feel at ease you know. Of course I wouldn’t understand you. You’re ununderstandable.

I’ll show you ununderstandable. I’ll take these eyes and strain them brown, I’ll take this hair and stretch it into a long flaxen rope just like yours. Though I don’t know how to braid, so we may look different still.

Do not wear my face. Ever.

Afraid of what you’ll see if I do?