Lee Mokobe

The first time I uttered a prayer
wasn't a glass stained Cathedral

I was kneeling long after the
congregation was on its feet.

The both hands into holy war trace
the Trinity across my chest,

my tiny body drooping like a question
mark all over the wooden pew

I ask Jesus to fix me and when
he did not answer I befriended

silence in the hopes that my son
would burn and felt my mouth

would dissolve like sugar and tongue.

But shame lingered as an after taste
and attempt to re-introduce

me to sanctity my mother told me of
the miracle I was said I could

grow up to be anything I want,

I decided to be a boy.

It was I had snapped back toothless
grin used their street cred,

played hide-and-seek with
what was left of my goal,

I was it the winner to a game
the other kids can play.

I was the mystery of an anatomy a
question asked but not answered

groping between awkward.

Boy an apologetic and when I turned
12 the boy phase wasn't deemed

cute anymore it was met with nostalgic
aren't missing my knees and

the,

and in the shadow of skirts or reminded
me that my kind attitude

would never bring a husband home
then I exist for heterosexual

marriage and childbearing and I swallowed
the end sauce along with

these flows naturally I did
not come out of the closet.

The kids at my school opened it was.

At my permission called me by name.

I did not recognize said lesbian
but I was more boy goal what can

then Bobby.

It had nothing to do with hating my body.

I just love it.

Do not to let a goal I treated like
a house and when your house is

falling apart.

You do not evacuate you make it
comfortable enough to house all

your insides you make it pretty enough
to invite guests over you

make the floorboards strong enough.

To stand on my mother for
years I've named myself.

After fading things as she comes
the echoes left behind by Maya

Hall leader Alcon Blake Brock intend
she fears that I'll die

without a whisper.

Then I will turn into,

what a shame conversations
at the bus stop,

she claims.

I would turn myself into a mausoleum
that I'm walking casket news

headlines as turned my identity
into a spectacle,

Bruce Jenner on everyone's lips.

Why the brutality of living in this
body becomes an drugs at the

bottom of the quality pages.

No one ever thinks of us as human
because we are more gross than

flesh because people fear that my
gender expression as a trick

that it exists to be perverse in
Smith and without their consent

there my body as a feast for the
eyes and hands and once the

effect of my career.

There were very good at it all the part.

They did not like they'll put me back
into the closet hang me with

all the other skeletons.

I will be the best attraction.

Can you see how easy it is to talk
people into coffins to miss

their names on grave stones and people
still wonder why they boys

rotting go away in high school hallways.

They are afraid of the coming another
has taken a second afraid of

classroom her sons becoming like
Judgment Day and now oncoming

traffic as embracing more transgender
children than parents.

I wonder how long it will be before
the train suicide notes

thought to feel redundant before we
realize that our bodies become

lessons about sin way before
we learn how to love them.

Thank God didn't didn't save
all this breadth and mercy.

Like my blood was not the way
that washed over Jesus' feet.

My prayers are now getting
stuck in my throat.

Maybe I am finally fixed,

maybe I just don't care.

Maybe God finally listened to my prayers.