If they could tell you with an ultrasound
if the child was to be like I am,
what would you do?
There would be a genocide
against my gender, my sexuality, my mind,
my identity.
Knowing this is more than hypothetical,
anger bleeds into words.

And I wonder if they had probed
through my brain before I was born
to see
what I would become,
would I even exist?
Would they have opted out of
the back roads my mental health would take
or the gender inside me that does not exist?

I’ve watched too many men
play transgender women,
watched a few too many shows steal trans identity
mottle it with their privileged hands
take it for their own like they have any right
to claim gender as an act.

I’ve watched too many people like me
consume another culture,
chew it like flavored wax and spit it back out
stripped of its autonomy and ready for
mass-consumption.
I’ve watched too many trans people
too many gay people
too many sick people
and too many black people
suffer.
I know the beautiful people we exploit,
highlight, erase, and even kill
and I’ve seen love ignite fires for them
for me.
I’ve seen exploding pulsars
in news that you would rather ignore
and I’ve seen union
in people you are trying to disperse
and I’ve seen the way the world can
choose to ignore
or choose to listen
when we use our voices as loudly as possible.

People are universes of changing constellations
and we shouldn’t need
to justify our right to life;
I raise my voice because I am important
not in spite of my gender but because of it
and black people are important
not in spite of their skin color but because of it
and gay people are important
not in spite of their sexuality but because of it,

because I am tired of watching
lives erased from a blackboard
assembled by straight white men.

I raise my voice
Because human experience must be shared
and if no one speaks
we cannot be heard.