castro tides

a poem by me

(casper)

my hands close into fists

i feel it in my chest the same

rage

that i’ve felt

i clench my fingers together and watch

as they call him a girl

watch my own suffering mirrored in another man

like i have never seen it before.

and just as i am angry in one second, in the next

i watch his grandmother

take down the very last unwanted photo,

and love him unconditionally.

i think of my mother immediately.

before i know it, i’m crying

tears running down my face, not hot and heavy

but cool, and sweet, like they’re being released

like i’m being released, like i’m being baptized by shared experience

a wave. that only i have the words to rise and describe

i move like the tides.

i watch a movie about a man who lives two lives

“he was a tomboy” his grandmother says

and i smile, and cry, and think of the way

my mother said the same thing

“i used to cut” says mack, and the

scars on my legs and arms seem to

almost burn in solidarity;

i am not alone.

it’s one thing to put yourself in

the footsteps of other men,

seeing movies with heros

thinking, “they’re just like me

because of x, y, and z”

but were they really like me?

it’s another thing to go

nearly 19 years of life and not see

yourself on the screen

and then all at once your untold life story

is coated in glory.

it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

and for once you feel like a survivor

and not a sufferer.

i move like the tides, my emotions

fall and rise with the crowd of people watching

i am the strongest i have ever been, suddenly

i feel like man.

because i realize that being a man is something

that you decide for yourself.

i am the only person who decides if i am

man enough.

and i am.