Adrian Parrish

They debate our existence

on political talk shows,
in congressional bills,
they try to regulate 
where we can piss,
what kind of medical assistance 
we are allowed to receive, 
they silence our stories,
hoping we will disappear. 
 
But we’ve been here since existence, 
since they started trying 
to put people in boxes. 
We’ve been dancing on the edge of boxes
waltzing outside the walls, 
pirouetting through more space
than we were allowed,
and we’re not stopping now. 
 
We’ve been called tomboys, sissies, dykes,
fags, trannies, and worse. 
We’ve been told to “man up”
or “act like a lady” 
when we’ve known what
they’re really trying to say is 
“Don’t be yourself.”
“Just give in to the social norms.”
“Don’t challenge our ideas 
of what gender can be.”
 
We’re not doing it to just rebel.
We are not some petulant cry for attention.
We have looked into the mirror 
that society has held up to us
and said “that isn’t me.”
There is something deeper in me,
a light begging to be released,
a truth waiting to be spoken,
to be shouted from rooftops. 
I contain multitudes you have not explored, 
colors beyond your limited spectrum,
I will not be imprisoned by your tidy definitions.
 
We’ve been mocked for our appearance,
bullied for our authenticity,
raped and killed for not being
what was expected. 
All while we tend to each other’s wounds
offering our couches to those 
kicked out by their family,
meal trains for top surgeries,
GoFundMe’s for lost jobs. 
 
We’ve found each other on Twitter and Reddit,
giving advice for hormones and surgeons,
comforting each other through divorce and separation,
giving advice for the partners
who insist “this is not what I signed up for”,
reassuring that it gets better 
that becoming your truest self is never a mistake 
that the world is better 
because you are in it. 
 
They debate our existence,
they try to regulate our resistance,
but we’re not going anywhere. 
We stand up for every child 
who feels like they will never fit in,
who thinks the world won’t notice 
if they shuffle off into the shadows,
every person who believes they are alone
in trying to find their space, their people. 
 
We shine our lights brightly 
across the night sky,
a sign that decries, that declares, 
that shouts with the voices 
of the millions who have gone before,
“Welcome home,
you belong here.”