Young Writers Society

The waves cut cross-ways, knocking me: no lullaby rocking is this. The sea: thick black - froth-topped. The wind makes the gulls wheel and cry to the cloud-stained sky, and I reel, no keel, tossing on the deep, sick sea. And no tip-top, stop-clock, fat-sailed, brass-railed, ship-shape ship am I: no sail at all, but tattered flags – rags. I am a ship cut loose, maples and mastless, captain and crewless, oar less and over-awed at the great expanse of ocean.

I speak to you but you can see me. You know I am here but you can't really hear me. I am what confuses you during the day and what keeps you up all night. I am the reason it's hard to sleep at night. You maybe scared of me for a few days or so, but soon you will get use to me, and you will question where I go. The truth is I am there and I always will be. As long as you don't try to get rid of me. Others may think you have gone crazy or maybe even mad, but the truth is your the only one I have. I am the voices, the ones inside your head. If you don't want me then get rid of me instead.

I live in an inner conflict between who I am and who I wanted to be and used to struggle for being not what I wanted to be but today I blame myself for being what I did not want for me every day look up in the mirror and see the looking face of what I never wanted to be but managed to become unwillingly going to my wardrobe and laying piece after piece of clothes on top of my bed the same way these aren’t tee shirts those sizes are not my own living the present day wearing five year-old clothes because when I stopped growing up I was deprived of the concept of renewal barely understanding when and what I look at in the mirror my face my clothes my hair everything in between living in an inner conflict with myself between who I am and who I want for me between what I like and what I want to do

It is June, in the humid city air when my father asks me for the first time why I have to label myself. You don’t have to be a boy, he says, and I feel the dry pavement beneath my feet, how slowly you can move if you try hard enough. You don’t have to put yourself in a box, he says, as if this is a revelation to me, as if in response I should widen my eyes, throw up my hands, and let my hair grow down to the small of my back like weeds. I feel tape across my mouth and mumble something about society and expectations and this is how I feel. Now I know what I should have said, what I should have shouted from the rooftops, what I should have branded into my forehead instead of biting my lip. I should have said that he was wrong. That the oppressive label is not “boy”, but “she” and “her” and all the things I never wanted to be called, the words like knives in the chest I shouldn’t have. I should have said that my being a boy is not a choice. My boyhood is an uprising, a trembling in my hands, a throbbing of my heart, a swelling of this heavy air in my lungs, the stars against night sky. It is who I am. I should have shouted that I am not forcing myself into the box, I am standing on it, fist in the air, framed against yellowing sky, screaming at the top of my lungs to the crumbling world that I am a boy and I am proud to be a boy and no one, not you or me or the city heat will change that. I feel the tape dig into my cheeks. I do not complain.

It started on that worn out barstool where I waited for something to happen. Your arm on my back jolted me out of a daydream when you offered to buy me another beer. Your bleach white smile hooked me, your eyes glinting like emeralds. We danced and I sunk into your arms, never wanting to leave. You invited me home--in seconds my velvet dress became a pile on the floor. Your scent seeped into me and you became my whole world. When the sun rose, I had to leave and it broke me. The world's colors seemed muted without you. I lived for night when I was yours again. I wanted you forever, but you said this had to end. As you muttered about wanting to still be friends, I tiptoed into the kitchen. Your screams sounded sweet on my eardrums as your skin surrendered to the blade. Your blood satisfied my thirst for you, the last wine I would ever drink. I kissed you one last time before slitting my own throat. As we lived in secret nights, together we die in the morning light.