an escalating metro panic attack at the first smell of your perfume since the last time I was consumed by it's scent, while embracing you. why do I still want/miss transphobic people? why can't I understand it's 'circumstantiality' with you...the wanting. even the made-up-looking words don't seem to help me understand anymore than I don't. neither do the other languages I dream in, the ones I was afraid of speaking in front of you.
why do they still lead me on after i've come out...the feelings, the people. are they too afraid to understand the queerness in the ever present flirtatiousness when in connection to me, upon reconnecting after I've self-actualized? or are they really straight, + i'm a delusional non-trans person, that you still only 'sort of want', like how you only 'sort of' wanted me before. how do I explain/justify the dysphoria, then?
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you took this picture of me in a practice room in the basement of our dorm building. i had recently chopped all my hair off in a dysphoric fit of rage after an audition. you found me crying under the piano and took it, so I could remember how I looked when I was happy. only, it is when i'm really happy that i feel the most unfamiliar.
you never really saw me, did you? or, is it that you hate how much I cause you to see yourself, which then forces + prolongs this profound solitude for us both. me + e v e r y o n e i k n e w.
i know myself, now. only, it means i'm the only person i might ever know.
how does the smell of you cause me to spiral like this...is this still what you smell like, are we both missing old versions of one another? me, missing your smell. you, missing my fake gender.
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i wouldn't be surprised if, when reading these lines + assessing the photograph, you're unable to recognize the subject is you. and me. and everything I will never receive. from maybe any/no-one.
dying alone, preserved in the memories of others who exiled me before my physical passing as a person I never was. because they preferred her.
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