Ik wil

“Waarom fietste ze daar?

Wat had ze aan?

Had ze zo laat over straat moeten gaan?

Waarom was ze niet thuis,

opgesloten?

Sleutel weggooid?

Wie heeft besloten

dat vrouwen de vrijheid mogen hebben

om te leven?”

Ik wil vrouwen op de straat.

Dronken, zingend,

S avonds laat.

Het geluid van lachen,

ongehinderd.

Zachte buiken

vol met vlinders.

Ik wil dat vrouwen 

een beetje kunnen leven.

Glazen bier 

drinken en feesten.

Korte kleding 

voor lange benen.

Onbezorgde grote stappen.

Ik wil vrouwen in hun vrijheid. 

Stemmen met volume 

en met blijheid.

Geen zoekende ogen

in hun nabijheid

of blikken op de klok

voor de tijd.

Ik wil dat vrouwen

fouten kunnen maken

en dan door kunnen

met hun dagen.

Zonder al de 

interview vragen.

Net als *mannen kunnen.

*cis het

Stained

Broken mirror days 

that turn everything off kilter.

I try to remember to breath. 

I try to remember to live.

To move through the days 

like everything is normal. 

And everything is normal.

But nothing truly is. 

My soul feels rubbed raw

like I tried to get a stain out.

The edges of the hurt dirt 

all that I can feel.

But the cloth of reality won't 

turn back to normal.

No matter how much 

I let my hands bleed.

I am forever worn out and altered.

Never again the same.

Never again unbroken. 

Never again unstained.

Winner

This was all I was made for.

This is what I was made to do.

Sliding parts and particles,

and into them slides you.

Violating in the way you stare.

Hands that glide me into submission.

I can feel your eyes in the back in my head

and I know that you are tracking

my weaknesses to turn yourself on.

My synapses firing warning shots.

You can't hack that kind of reaction.

You think that this is hot.

I can see your pupils dilating 

and I know that you can't hide 

how much that you hate me

(for being like a woman)

and how much you wish I died.

And if I look into your mind 

I know what I will see.

A gun against my temple,

and me upon my knees.

In your mind I'm begging you

to make sure the angle is correct

I'll blend out into your carpet 

and that will be that. 

I would like to congratulate you.

Not a lot of people have the tools

to make me remember what they did

but I guess that you do.

The hands I tried to dismember

from where they were left on my body

permanently residing now

on the inside of my knees.

Intimate violator, 

but in a long distance key.

Licking your lips at the thought

that you finally own me.

Show it to the world,

the way you thought you won.

Your obscurity isn't protection,

it's you fading into no one.

If you need me to ease your panic,

I will turn my skin into stone and leather.

If that will convince you I can take the beating.

If that will make you feel better.

Wiping the back off my hand 

on my lips you cracked.

I never learned how to back down

from a simple attack.

I hope the smears of blood 

will burn into your eyes

until looking at me repulses you

from having another try.

I'm not counted among the numbers.

But you are….

Running away from this

will only get you so far.

Winner.

Amusing

If I had to describe 

the way this panic tasted

I would have described 

the taste of randomly plucked berries

I don't know the names of.

Ashes and smoke

and the iron taste of my bleeding lips

after a sober brawl with a stranger 

that called me a faggot.

Either way I'm describing memories.

With the way my lips are currently cracked,

you would think that I was still fighting strangers.

In a way that might still be the case.

Because the ease with which you are able to aim

your punches downwards is astounding.

No worry about getting the angle just right 

to make your fist land harder. 

My bottom lip, a bottom line and dollar sign.

I tried to knock you out for

setting me back in my healing journey 

even though I had no chance of winning.

The only thing I broke was the skin

on my fingers and the computer screen.

Do you like to tell yourself

that those bloodstains are yours?

That you beat me down?

This thing that you have done?

It doesn't make you the winner though,

or morally superior.

You didn't do it for a great cause.

Just money and fear.

Do you truly think you got me?

You're just an efficient loser with a full wallet

who knows how to climb upwards using 

the bodies of women

just to peek right through our Windows.

Never going higher than low hanging fruit.

You never go higher than seeing the ground. 

One day you will be the one dissected.

One day you will be whose chest they pry open.

Hacking away at me isn't going to stop that,

or do anything, actually. 

I am not made out of numbers or any type

of binary code, and I am not made of taking 

your punishment lying down just because 

I can hide my pain behind flowery language.

I can use a metaphor for every boundary 

violation but they aren't meant to hide you.

This is me fighting strangers.

At the end of the day

I know you but

you don't know me.

You know my numbers,

and how they placed 

the alphabet in a certain order

to describe me.

No matter my fear, that's still pathetic. 

Femicide

Ik ben een statistiek.

Niet uniek.

Zonder naam,

Zonder faam.

Je kent mij via de dader, en dan

Was het toch zo'n aardige man!

“Doet geen vlieg kwaad.”

Nou ja, behalve mij en nu is het te laat.

Ik wou dat ik een mens was voor jou.

Wield

You wield the word queer like

your tongue cuts flesh, and expect

it to faze me. But even if

you sharpened it on a Dyke,

it doesn't draw blood. It is 

more there for you than for me

to be honest. To make you feel

an undeserved sense of superiority.

If there are worse things to call me

I've used them. If I'm honest,

I have invented spectacular curses

to put on my name. Pain spread sadistically 

like it's pornographic. There is

nothing less I will settle for. You 

and I are not on the same level. Excuse 

me, I got better things to do.

I finally felt safe.Was that a mistake?

That feeling of being watched.

It starts at the top of my head,

Moving slowly down my spine,

Growing in sensation 

But never settling.

It set me back to being 5 years old.

It is that same sense of insecurity,

Like eyeballs growing out of my shoulder blades

And me just hoping I will notice,

This time,

The moment things will blow up around me.

I can't believe that pen on paper 

can have this much effect but

The blanket of comfort is now

Rudely ripped from my body

And my sense of privacy was violated.

And I can't do nothing about this.

Maybe wait for clarity

But that never feels like enough, does it?

So I watch the page with glaring persistence,

Press refresh every 5th second,

Set camp underneath my mailbox

And forget to eat.

Every ring of the doorbell has become 

A test of my trust in humanity again.

The truth is that I don't know you.

Or you. Or you.

The truth is I no longer know myself. 

How do you mourn someone who is still alive?

Step 1. Repeatedly.

Step 2. Wake up every morning wanting your mother like you're 5 years old. Shatter.

Step 3. Try forcing yourself to stay asleep. Wake up fully anyway because nothing stops for you and closing your eyes means little when reality is imprinted on your eyelids.

Step 4. This is where people start the day, maybe have a coffee. Why you ordered bedrot and tears for breakfast, no one will know. You already have 4 cans of it in the cupboard.

Step 5. Think that you finally understand the senselessness of whatever is happening. Then understand you don't.

Step 6. Find new things to mourn. There is always something to fill yourself up on.

Step 7. Forget for a moment what happened. It's a peaceful thought. Feel guilty immediately. 

Step 8. Panic attack time. Choke on your teeth as the change wraps around your heart. Don't forget not to breathe.

Step 9. Watch everything you have known come apart as you try to stitch fast enough. Unravel along with it.

Step 10. Start back at Step 1. No get out of jail free card. Life doesn't come with those.

Spite

You can compare me with orange

and tell me my shape is wrong.

That doesn't mean you're right

and we both know that. 

You just want to make sure 

we all know you're more important.

Your money already explained this.

It has never been about my wrongness,

but my existence.

The fact that I dare 

to be emboldened enough

to be myself. 

I should have known I was meant to hide myself.

The only harm I do to you

is not reacting to your pearl clutching 

with the deference you think you deserve.

A shocking assault to your entitlement. 

Sometimes I wish 

my transness was born out of spite. 

But at least it's still why I can paint my hair blue.

I want you to never forget I'm here.

Painsomnia

I am too tired to sleep.

My mind is rejecting any sense.

In silence I weep,

The pain feels like violence.

Digging for scraps of rest,

Has my anger rising.

As the caged feeling set,

I cannot stop the drowning.

In despair I laugh,

As my brain no longer regulates.

Committed to the clock,

And the hours ticking away.

The hopelessness sets in.

A feeling like scabs on my teeth.

As daylight starts to float in,

I finally fell asleep.

Only to have to wake up again.

Toxic positivity

I don't think a crystal will heal this.

You can look for answers in outside forces

all you want, but the rot goes deeper.

It isn't anything, it's everything. 

It isn't fixed with simply staying positive. 

Actually, stop telling me to stay positive.

That's just another way to expect inaction from me

and frankly, it's toxic and oppressive.

Anger isn't the demon you make it out to be.

It's an emotion that can have its reasons.

Very valid ones, if you ask me.

They are killing my people,

they are killing all the people they think are different.

I can't soft-breath myself out of this.

So if you think my fist is shocking,

raised in the air like it currently is,

I honestly don't know what to tell you,

but I definitely know what not to ask of you.

Cause you don't have the answers,

and I don't think you truly want them.

Your waterfast starts at 7,

And time means different things to you and I.

Brainfog

Doesn't the word brainfog

Imply you might find your way

If you travel the same route and not

Divert from your destination? 

What I experience is cuts

Between my brain, mouth and fingers.

A severe profound loss

Of former existing connections. 

It's hard to not feel it as a lack

When your tongue feels broken 

And your brain reflects 

Scattered ash and burial sites.

Every thought is emptying 

Inside me and lost forever.

A thousand little deaths sending

Me the message I don't exist.

That is a feeling like hell.

It's a constant loss of control.

A complete inability to be yourself. 

Fog clears sometimes.

Hyperbole

I am tired of support just being words.

I think you also want us out of existence.

Just go down like perfect victims so you

can pretend to mourn us.

That you wanted us.

But you don't want us 

alive.

You just want our obedience 

and our gratitude.

Our silence.

As ourselves?

We're too loud.

Too opinionated.

Have too many feelings.

“Will you STOP harassing people who 

say they care about you” (but not really)?

I had to ask you to stop misgendering 

one of my deeply mourned colleagues.

They got guided home by the stars,

and you were guided by your mouth.

I had to ask you to stop financing our murders

but because I'm not fiction, I don't matter. 

Because I'm not fiction I'm just a bully,

a violent oppressor,

harassing my way into your privilege. 

Either way,

in life or death,

you think you get to decide who we are.

So no, 

you aren't different.

We're either perfect silent victims 

or violent oppressors,

to you

but never just people.

So yeah,

you too want us silenced.

You too want us ripped to pieces.

A quick slipping into our demise.

You only want trans people to exist in ways

that you approve or not at all.

A simple unqueering,

back to our place.

Made to fit in

or die.

You'll think this poem is a hyperbole.