Cage

I have to love you through a cage. You are my great white shark. You're beautiful. You're powerful and brave and hard, so hard to love, my shark, so full of teeth and I believed I could dive beneath that water and swim but I'm losing my limbs. My excuses vamoosing to be this stupid. I have to choose different. I have to love you through a cage. My great black bear, your teeth gleam through a glare. They are teeth that could tear off my skin but I see you wearing a grin. I see it shine like the curve of the moon.. And your laugh and your hugs. I love it so much when your arms wrap round my gut. So soft I forgot that those arms come with claws primed to pounce and to maul me if I move too suddenly, and I don't want to run but I'm maxed out on regret for the time I spent playing dead to avoid that claw's edge. Cutting off pieces of me and feeding you them so you would not starve and now I'm something less than I was at the start but even if I'm limping, at least I'm walking. Whatever I have to sacrifice, no matter how hard, I’ll begin a new act in my life, whether written in ink or in spit, I made a promise that I would survive this. And you growl at me, you cry and you plead, asking why all these boundaries through tears in your eyes and I have to hide all the blood that I leak and trick you to think that my heart's not broken so that I can start over. I show you a cold front so maybe you'll give up. I can't be weak to a lion, I must scream. I have to love you through my rage. I have to curl my lips up, my pearl white fangs flexed out. My cactus arms stretched out as if to beckon a hug, but covered in needles and you held me despite them. And you left blood on my quills to write with. And you claim to have wasted the time spent but it’s our life and our time can never be worthless and now I need you to survive this. Love me like a page in your life and turn it.

A story for Jay Hulme

Dusk turned to twilight as the city burned. Nothing could be done. Despite my best efforts, every dark word of the old woman's prophecy had come to pass. The blue star had fallen. The rain had turned to fire. The day had turned to night. The white king had risen, and created his army. Every marker had come to pass. Every riddle she spoke was answered, the knots of fate relentless. Fate could not be escaped. And fate said very clearly that no man could defeat him.

No man could defeat him, she said. The line echoed back and forth in my mind as I lay beneath the remains of my gollum to shelter myself from the falling embers and flaming arrows that rained overhead. Was there another line? Maybe a key to what could defeat him, if not a man? These thoughts were all I could do to numb myself from the sounds of the common folk being slaughtered, and the wound bleeding from my chest. My eyes ran over the corpse of the chimera I hired, her expression still caught in the surprise she felt when the White King cut her in half. I was surprised, too. My entire unit was destroyed in seconds. It was like nothing at all, and then so much death all at once. And the worst part, he fucking spared me. I took a wound to the chest in the scuffle, but when it came to landing the finishing blow, he hesitated, looked closer, and then let out a thundering, victorious laugh. For he knew the prophecy, too. He knew there was no one else left to stop him now. It was just me, and I was just a man. He left me to bleed out and went on to claim victory and sit the throne.

And I tried to do just that, give up, bleed out. I almost did, too. But I could see the palace doors in the distance. They were opened, taunting me, and the arrogant bastard didn't even place a guard in front. I could just walk in and show him who can't be defeated by any man. But I shuttered at the thought. What could I do? The prophecy was prophecy. Charging him alone would just be a suicide mission. Still, I couldn't get that laugh out of my head. I felt so humiliated. And it's not like I had any where to retreat to. If everything was futile, I may as well stare doom in the face, right? The more I thought about it, and the longer I listened to the screams of the city folk, the more clearly I knew what I had to do. The prophecy may have been written, but the songs had not, and I wanted them to say I tried. So I rose to my feet, now flooded with newfound bravery, powered by conviction, desperation, and humiliation. Steps began to come, one in front of another, as something in me moved. Not deliberately, not like I desired to be there. But like I was compelled by some unseen current. Compelled by the lack of other options, by a conviction greater than self-preservation. I passed through the door. 

"Hey!" turns out there was a guard, maybe several. It was all a haze at that point. I don't even remember reaching for my blade, but by the time I reached the royal chamber, it was dripping blood.

"You," the white king breathed a sigh of relief when I entered the chamber, as if he thought something else was killing his guards. "You should have run for the hills," he chuckled. "You should have hidden in caves and waited and eon or two, for my reign to end."

"Your reign ends today," I stepped closer. He lashed out, launching me back with the pulse he emitted from the swipe of his palm. I slammed against the stone walls of the palace and felt my hair-tie come undone, my long black hair unfurling on either side like raven's wings as I kicked myself from the wall and stormed forward with a twirling slash. He buckled with the blow but when I came for another strike, he grabbed my sword with a bare hand and squeezed, indenting his grip into the blade and bending the edge. He attempted to pull me in but I let go of my sword. As I leapt back, he reached for my arm, ripping at my bracelet and sending the beads flying. I pulled out my long knife, then tore back into him with one slash and another. He took a cut to the arm from the first, but on my second swing, he blocked my arm and grabbed me. This time, I couldn't get away. He proceeded to slam me against his throne with a grunt. I noticed a trickle of blood from his arm. Did I just make him bleed? He cocked his arm back for a punch, but I kicked him back, then I jumped over the throne and began looking for a weapon. Blood bubbled up my throat pooled around my lips, mixing with my lipstick.

"Don't you get it?!" He snapped my sword in half out of frustration and chucked the pieces at me. "No man can defeat me! Give up and die already!"

"That's the funny thing," I answered. "I always wondered about who I was, why I always wanted to be more than just a man." I picked up my broken sword and began to circle him.

"Oh please," he laughed menacingly. "You think you're not still just a man because you don't dress like them? Don't kid yourself. Deep down you know the truth."

"You're right," I responded, circling closer with every strafe. "I've always known the truth, deep down. I just let people like you convince me otherwise."

The white king growled, unleashing a pulse of energy that crumbled the wall behind me. My hair flailed, but this time I took it in stride. I looked at the demolished wall behind me with perplexity as the palace began to creak and cave. His eyes widened. I stepped closer.

"No!" He shrieked. "It can't be! You're a man!" I took another step closer, and his anger turned to fear. He began to plea. "Please. Half my kingdom, please. I will give you half, please. Sir, be reasonable. Sir.”

“It's ma'am,” I corrected, sinking the blade into his heart.

Don't Call Me Brave

Don't call me brave, I wish I were but I wasn't. I didn't charge this field to the crack of a trumpet with faith in the divine truth of my cause, I flunked life, I sunk this ship. I lived out my death wish until I had jack shit to lose and then I transitioned. I flipped out and ripped down this round world my thumb out to peel back the curtains and unseal my sunlight but I was still encased glass. I was see-through and hollow; a monotone robot unable to emote all of these feelings stuck underneath me and nobody was me. I couldn't express me. Not a hat, not a goatee, not a travelling poet fucking with locals and living off magic tricks. I still felt broken. Like a door in my house sits inviting me to my own unexplored territory. The one thing I had left was everything I wasn't allowed to be in this binary world. So I became her.

I'm not brave. I wasn't prepared. I didn't strut out the closet with fat hips from practicing dancing in front of the mirror. I jumped out a burning building thinking only that falling beat boiling alive. And somehow that trampoline found my feet and I landed free from that agony. I found her there waiting, ribbons in her hair hanging like pieces of forgotten dreams, recalled like songs played in the perfect key to unlock me.

Is a bird brave for flying? A squid for deep diving? I'm not brave I'm just born this way and no bigot alive can take it. Go on, tell me I'm ugly, I find it affirming to my womanhood when you try to tie inherent worthiness to my appearances. Tell me to repent, you see the Bible like fences on a racetrack, I see it like sign posts and landmarks to pull us out of the wilderness. I saw through the old me and didn't know who remained until God told me to be the person they made me, and I couldn't give that to the bigots if I wanted to.