Remember when you yearned
to be the you you see now?
Remember when you would have
rather been dead than to be seen as less than any other man.
Remember when you thought life would have been different by now?
You’d thought you’d be stealth, yet now fitting in doesn’t seem to matter.
They are killing us regardless of the latter.
Wake up and smell the pancake batter.
Dreams don’t shatter, they shift when you’re always growing with.
Poets note
I wrote this poem in a few minutes while sitting at work. The thought surfaced fully formed and wouldn’t leave me alone. It is a direct address to myself, specifically to who I was before testosterone. When stealth felt like the goal, the reward, and the proof that everything would eventually be okay.
For a long time, I believed that fitting in would mean safety. That if I could disappear into manhood cleanly enough, life would turn out differently than it has. Eleven years later, that belief no longer holds. The distance between who I wanted to be then and who I am now is not regret, it is reality catching up.
This poem exists to acknowledge that shift. Not to explain it, not to soften it, and not to make it palatable. Stealth stopped mattering because it never protected us the way we were promised. Growth didn’t erase the danger, it only changed how clearly I can see it.
This note is not a justification. It is context. The poem is memory speaking to memory, and the point is not arrival, it is recognition.
Explore all Poeaxtry Links
Say it. Don’t spray it.