The Anguish of Deluded Parents
In your minds, I’m dead
I’ve abandoned you and left
You mourn
Gnash your teeth
And wail
Agonizing for me to be returned to you
But what you don’t see
In your misconstrued grief
Is that I am not dead
In fact, I am more alive
Than I have ever been
Do not go to my grave and weep
For I am not there
I am not afraid to keep on living
And I will live in spite of your fear
In spite of your hate
Which is packaged as love
You scream in anguish
Demanding to know
How
Why
I would do this to you
But your vision is warped
In reality, you have done all of this
To yourselves
It’s only in your minds
That I have died
Do not go to my grave and weep
For I am not there
I am alive and fighting
In spite of what you’ve done
Do not smother me in my sleep
I will not be silenced
I will not be a hastily buried secret
I will not be shoved aside
Not anymore
Do not go to my grave and weep
For I am not there
You dug that grave yourselves
And deluded yourselves into thinking
That I was buried there
But I am not
You mourn over an empty grave
One with a name that isn’t mine
You mourn the ideation of me
That you created
Then tried to extinguish
The true me
When I broke the mould
I cannot be that person for you
So go ahead and grieve
If you can’t see that I have never been
That version you idolized
You may go to my grave and weep
But remember that I am not there
I am living and I am free
All that you mourn
Is a figment of your imagination
That never truly existed
I am not afraid to keep on living
I am not afraid to spit in your tearful faces
I will live
I will be true
And you cannot stop me
For I am not in your grave
You did not succeed
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Comments
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Annette M Velasquez
Riveting and intense. The emotions here are staggering and you have effectively expressed your survival, despite the brokeness- and dysfunction around you. This is a poem of triumph and healing... It is eloquent and profound.
acriartem
Oh my goodness. I've been trying to write a song about being trans for a while (I'm working on a small passion project) and your poem works so much better than any of the poorly constructed clusters of words I've made. This poem is honest, it has grit and talks about how awful parents who don't understand can be. Yet, it also shows that life still goes on, you can choose to ignore the hate and keep moving forward to a better life.