Best For:
Transgender people who live daily life faced with hypervigilance, rural queer folk, trauma survivors, queer individuals tuned into TikTok trends, Indie readers who prefer real over polished, activists, & people who use hiking as survival.
Transgender Survival & the American Landscape:
Some truths follow us the way we follow trails:
- Step-by-step
- Ridge to gorge and back
- Breath to breath
I may hike because it steadies me, but I know that the world doesn’t always steady people like me. This poem sits in a space where identity meets danger, where movement becomes survival, and being transgender in America becomes a beautiful declaration and a life-ending risk.
There is a trend moving through TikTok right now that states “ I was born trans, I will die trans, but I do not want to die because I am trans”
I wrote this piece with that echo and the remnants of the feeling of my chest binder, although I took the last one off eight years ago.
This is my lived reality.
This poem to me is exactly what all of this feels like when carried through America especially rural America. It was born inside the part of me that never gets to rest or take a break. It is the hypervigilance of always looking over my shoulder. It may not be pretty, but it is honest and honesty is the only thing that’s ever kept me alive.
Here you’ll find the danger of being transgender and the United States of America, even after the caution tape has been ripped down. You will find that typically the threat always stays the same. Fear may follow us and danger may stay the same, but my resilience here will never back down.
Honestly, here you’ll find the part of me that knows visibility can be fatal, so I never actually rest. Located here is the transgender man that scans every room for the exit every time he enters, the man who hikes miles, gasping for breath just to be able to breathe again, as well as the man that knows danger hides behind every corner.
Are you ready to unpack that?
Die Trans
I was born trans
I will die trans
I do not want to die because I am trans.
Day by day
As time passes
Identifying myself feels
like laying my life on the line
Step by step
As I trek on
these thoughts haunt me as if
I’m projecting them onto the big screen
Can they tell?
Do they know?
I’m in danger
At this pace it won’t end well,
We can tell caution tape ripped down
Is still just as yellow
The Bitterness in the End:
At the end, we see a transgender man moving on a trail that doesn’t always safely move around him or others like him. Yet every step reminds him that he is still here, he is still trekking, and still refusing to let fear silence him.
This poem shows you that lines that started a TikTok trend carry deeper weight when you actually move through life with them. This is the truth. I will always walk with: I was born trans and I will die trans, but I also refuse to live in fear because I am trans. I will always live on my own terms no matter how dangerous the world around me may seem. While the danger doesn’t disappear, neither does he.
I’m sorry if you were looking for a clean ending, and you didn’t find that here. However I won’t apologize for always having the same stubborn heartbeat that pushes me through this life. While this piece doesn’t solve anything it does prove that sometimes the truth is the only resolution there is to be had.
No matter what I will keep hiking, I will keep living and I will keep being and that’s the whole fucking point.
Read Poeaxtry Poems:
BPD- Colorful Poetry. Appalachia- The Rust Belt – A Poem.
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