Do you know what it feels like when you’re invisible?

To the people that you have shared your life with

To know their love was insufficient, to permit them to notice your suffering.

That when the secrets failed and the truth is finally reveled

Their discomfort would not permit them to share in your happiness,

 

It’s a difficult thing to accept, that your death

Would have been a more acceptable outcome

That the unease of lifelong friends runs so deep

It will keep your name from passing their lips …

ever again

 

To be forced to accept the painful revelation

That their greatest fear is not for your survival

But for their own humiliation,

That now everyone will know and feel that they were complicit.

In your in your selfish gender transition

 

Do you know what it feels like to be visible?

To those who hate without compassion

Who glorify their violence without reason

Who would do you harm or deny your right to live your life

 

Whose loathing in kept in check only by the thinnest thread of civilization

A shield against such hate so thin as to be almost a wish

Fraying each day, barbarism becoming the new populism

So I stand to be seen, to show that I am human

To speak, that they might hear my voice, understand my existence

 

Some will listen, a few will understand, many will do neither

Some are enlightened, while others are emboldened in their hate

 

Whether they understand or remain steadfast in their ignorance,

Too many feel they are entitled to express their opinion,

About the worth as humans, of all transgender individuals

About our very right to existence

 

Some become emboldened in their hate at the very thought of our equality

Staking out their positions, immutable and indefensible

They believe that they can force us into invisibility

That through isolation, threats and violence

We will willingly renounce our reality.

 

This will not happen, not now, not ever

We will no longer debate our right to exist

We have always been here,

We will always be here.