The Structure of a Breakdown: My Experiences as an Aroace Trans Person as Told Through Poetry

A pair of ghazals:

Cut off, cut out of me

These organs that curse me!

But is that my own voice,

Or one they put on me?

Try another label, explain it again

Shouldn’t need a degree to understand me.

Even those of us who are the same,

Why must you be so far from me?

I think I am forever chasing a home

That will never actually happen to me.

Running around the entire continent,

Begging for anyone, anyone, to see me!

Let me be free of the expectations.

Maybe then a mirror will show me:

Who am I?

Who can love me?

Master of all, master of none,

Does anything matter without the sun?

I read, I write, I do my best,

And that is all that I have ever done.

And maybe I should not admit,

But sometimes all I want to do is run—

Away from this approaching doom

Sudden step, a head start before the gun.

Then go, and go, and go, and go—

All I ever wanted was to have fun.

A pair of limericks:

Oh in this world of ours,

There is a girl who cowers

For the powers that be

Just won’t permit she

Be sweet before she sours.

Can you at all believe,

That they can dare to grieve?

They watch us all thrive—

We weren’t meant to survive—

Oh where is our reprieve?

A pair of haikus:

I crave the romance

I see and hear all about.

Must it be fiction?

Is it coercion?

Sex without the attraction?

Who am I pleasing?

A rispetto:

My baby sister moved away—

A new woman in a war zone.

My friends are also worlds away—

If I could reap what I have sewn!

Understanding of who I am

And frankly to not give a damn!

In this world that terrifies me,

Oh where to find my family?