i wander
this world everyday
yet i go
completely unseen

my gender is
ectoplasm
just a trace left by
a phantom like me

what does it mean
to be a ghost,
a being trapped between this world
and the afterlife

is there even a life
after one such as this:
 life of translucency,
indecency, and strife

my identity is often
transparent and lost;
at best dislocated,
dismembered, or disavowed

most think i am found in
the blackness that frames eyes
but in the heart of every dead boy
is where i reside 

eyes
lips
stares
and glares

caught between
disdain and desire,
pass through me as if i am nothing
but nothingness

i am the air that is inhaled
during your gasps,
the carbon dioxide
in your exhale

the glue
that keeps everything together:
taken for granted
and unseen

we are often deceived
by the sparkle of visibility
recognition fuels volition
a queer activist says to me

but how many women like me
have died chasing that rabbit
down the hole that leads
her to Venus Extravaganza’s wonderland

a girl like me is not unusual
yet often made a spectacle,
who better to know
the high price of being a muse

crossing genders is carnivalesque:
suspension in transition,
truth mutated
into transgression

my trace is found
in the racing hearts
of women like me
walking home at night

the ways in which
our bodies
and genders
are defined and confined 

policed and disposed of
for the threat of resisting order
i wish my sister Leelah Alcorn
could have grown older

my pulse is felt in every
sorry, i’m just not used to this
what exactly are you
i didn’t mean to be offensive, you know what i mean though

i’m bruised by every
i’m just not into that
so really you are a man
you’ll find someone right for you someday

always exhausted of the unfairness in
but i’m the one who gave birth to you
you deceived me for so long
why bother doing this if it’s this hard

plagued by the uncertainty of:
will i get home tonight
will i ever feel home in the skin i am in
who will love me if i tell the truth

who tends to me in my time of need
to soak my wounds
and nourish my soul
when my shoulders get weak

everyone in this city
is travelling in one way or another
but how many apparitions like me
are stuck in limbo

what creatures of this island
are part of my clan of vampires
can’t find themselves in the hanging glass,
left with stomachs full of thorns

monsters that blend vitality and fatality,
augment the organic with the artificial
all with a taste for the same invigorating blood:
an antidote for dysphoria