Transgender

What makes a boy a boy or a girl a girl?
   Is it what's between their legs?
   What's on their chest or lack thereof?
   The clothes they wear?
   What happened to 'It's what's on the inside that counts'?

I bind my chest
I wear baggy clothes
I try my best to act the role of what I am on the inside
Still society knows me as 'Jessica'.

Who is Jessica?
   Jessica is the little girl that died when I was 6.
   Jessica is the girl who's body I own.
   Jessica is the random jumble of syllables and letters that don't fit the person on the inside.
So who is on the inside?
On the inside is Jarek.
   Jarek is the boy who was born when Jessica died.
   Jarek is the boy who's stuck in this girl's body.
   Jarek is the boy who suffers to try to make society see him.
   Jarek is the boy who's always cast in the shadow of the girl's body he's forced to own.

Some days Jessica comes back out.
Some days Jessica is shown to the world again.
Those days where this body is put in dresses and skirts,
That's when Jessica comes back.
And she gets told,
   "You make such a nice girl!"
   "You look beautiful!"
You know what Jarek wants to hear most?
   He wants to hear that this doesn't look right.
   That the dress his body is forced in doesn't fit his place.
   That he looks ugly, terrible even.
   And that he should go back to Jarek, and let Jessica stay dead.

Scars line his wrists.
   Her wrists.
He scars her body because he feels it isn't his.
He was forced into this body at birth to suffer, and the scars let his suffering be known.
And yet when he's questioned,
   "What happened there?"
He lies those familiar lies he's already thought of and rehearsed in his mind.
   "I fell,"
   "I scraped it against something,"
   "I got hit with a tree branch,"
Anything to satisfy their questioning.

This girl,
   This boy,
This person is forced to say in this body, suffering every day
Trying to make it another four more years.
He is only but a freshmen in high school,
He's always told this will go away, that it's just a phase,
   He's been in this 'phase' for 8 years
It isn't a phase
   It won't go away.
He barely survives for his friends
The people who truly know who he is and accepts him for who he is,
Those are the people he lives for,
And all the others hate and rejection just can't measure up
   For if they did, Jarek would be dead.