The worst part of the current purging of Trans people from history is that the kids that will grow up in the coming decades will have to build up the Trans vocabulary from scratch.  I grew up like that. There is no pain like believing you are alone in being Queer.

Words

When I was a child
there were no words
for what I was.
And so I became 
silence and solitude
made flesh.

 

Without words,
I could not describe 
the shape of my soul
or the truth in my heart.
I was swallowed whole
by that wordless void.

 

I was nineteen
when the words came
settled in my heart,
and told me who I was.
Forty, before I found
the courage to be me.

 

For over thirty years
I’ve lived and loved
as a woman in this world.
In time I felt settled
in my new-old life and
thought no more of it.

 

But now a Tyrant sits
on the throne,
and knows the power 
that words have —
seeks to destroy them
through lies and slander.

 

You cannot always 
shout down Power.
You cannot reason
with Evil at all.

But you can keep
the words alive.

 

Because no child 
should become
silence and solitude 
made flesh.