This poem, “A Thousand Times,” is a heartfelt reflection on personal growth, identity, and the journey of self-discovery. It explores the desire to reach back in time to encourage your younger self while celebrating the resilience and courage it takes to embrace who you truly are.
“A Thousand Times”
Brave girl, you have a beautiful soul… brave little girl
y o u
are worth far more than you know and oh, the places you will go
I have wished a thousand times for the ability to travel back in time
to let you know
that w e
Made it.
You just had to give life a try.
Oh,
And…
Realize that you’re a guy.
That,
was always enough.
A Thousand Times encourages readers to reflect on their own journeys of self-discovery and resilience. It’s a reminder that embracing identity, learning to trust oneself, and recognizing your worth are victories worth celebrating. This poem is both an homage to the past and a celebration of the present, highlighting the strength it takes to grow and accept oneself fully.
I’m deeply honored to share that my very first published interview is out now in the June 2025 issue of Joyfully Wondrous, a beautifully crafted magazine by Magique Publishing.
Pages 49 through 50 feature a conversation where I open up about the intersections of my life as a trans man and a poet. How grief, empathy, and raw emotion fuel the poetry I create. How my identity shapes my voice. This interview is about the complex dance between the poetry, transgenderism, and nature and how I channel that into honest, resonant art.
Poetry has always been a sanctuary for me. A place to release pain, explore identity, and connect with others through shared human experience. This feature gives me a platform to share that journey publicly for the first time.
If you want to read more about how I’ve woven my life, loss, and transformation into poetry and to understand the ways transness shapes my artistic voice, please check out the full issue here and check out the awesome poetry published in this months issue here:
Thank you to everyone who’s supported me on this path. This moment feels huge and I’m beyond grateful to Magique Publishing for this incredible opportunity.
I am a fan of the melancholy, the morbid, and the macabre.
A glutton for the gore and the grotesque. A shameless slut for a slasher or two.. I’m hoping this is also you.
See I find it easier to write about what I know and I like. If I hit a bump or two and I cannot seem to write a thing, I like. I just look into the dark for a spark.
If you make friends when the sunshine dies where the sidewalk ends… Where creepers find a home to crawl, You are in for a treat. Take your seat.
This is my homage to the strange, the odd one out, the girl who forgot her shout, and the boy who had her back but never his own. You are no longer under attack.
The prompt I saw on threads was to write about the first time you felt completely unseen:
Life as a kid
As a child, I used to insist I was a boy. I did not insist in a loud, rebellious way. I did so in that quiet, matter-of-fact voice kids use when they are just telling the truth. I felt like I was the only boy in a lineup of girls. At least, that’s how it felt whenever someone corrected me. They laughed and said, “You’ll grow out of it.” But I never did. I only grew into it… into me.
I ran with the boys, scraped my knees with them, played rough and loud and honest. We climbed trees like they held all the answers and built forts with sticks and secrets. Those early years were golden, before the world came in with its rules about what belonged to whom. I didn’t notice at first. Not until the divide came. The boys started pulling away. Birthday parties became gendered. Sleepovers stopped. Sports teams split. The invitations disappeared one by one like leaves falling off a tree I thought was evergreen.
The Change
That was the first time I felt completely unseen. Not because no one was looking at me, but because no one was seeing me. They were seeing who they decided I was.
I didn’t have the words for what I was yet. I just had the ache. I remember looking in the mirror. I tried to figure out where the boy had gone. I wondered if he’d ever been there at all. Society had given me a body and a name, and neither fit right. I had to carry both like a costume I couldn’t take off.
Losing those friendships was like being exiled from a country I thought was mine. And what’s worse, it was a silent exile. No goodbyes. Just distance. Just a shift. Just the sense that I had broken some unspoken rule.
Fast-Fwd to Now
Now, years later, I know better. I know who I am. But that was the beginning. That moment was the first real grief. The first rupture. The first time I felt the sharp sting of being unseen because I was trying to be seen for real.
Axton Mitchell age 5 pre school
Axton Mitchell Age 33
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The oldest thing I wear is my skin. It’s been with me through every phase, every fight, every shedding of who I was told to be. This skin has known confusion, dysphoria, silence. It’s been misread, mislabeled, mistaken. It wore names I’ve since buried. It held me tightly in closets I clawed my way out of. It was called “girl” before I could speak “man.” It carries the imprint of binding, the memory of compression against ribs, the ache in my back from years of trying to disappear. It remembers summer heat trapped under layers meant to protect, meant to hide. There are scars, both chosen and given. Lines from surgeries that felt like reclamation. Faint stretch marks from growth I wasn’t supposed to have. Marks I didn’t ask for but now claim as mine. My skin has become something sacred. It doesn’t forget the weight of being visible, or the danger of being seen too clearly. But it fits me better now. It answers to the right name. And even when it’s tired, even when the world tries to make it a target, it stays. It stretches. It protects. It tells the story I’ve fought like hell to live.
Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?
“They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.”- a Mexican Proverb.
I live by this quote because it speaks to the core of how I’ve survived, how I’ve become. I’ve been buried in silence, shame, grief, and rejection. As a trans man, I’ve felt the weight of people trying to erase me. As a creator and as a human being who has known deep loss and deep injustice, I’ve felt small. But this quote reminds me that the soil they thought would smother me became the ground I rooted into.
Being buried isn’t the end. It’s the start of a transformation they never expected.
Every painful experience, every time I was dismissed, doubted, or devalued became fuel for something greater. I took that darkness and grew from it. I let it teach me. And through that growth, I’ve found strength that’s quiet, steady, and impossible to fake.
This quote is also about defiance. It’s about being told I wouldn’t make anything of myself, and deciding to blossom anyway. It reminds me that even when the world tries to erase people like me, our stories don’t just survive. They thrive. Our existence pushes through concrete. Our art blooms in places no one watered. Our lives are proof that growth is still possible in the harshest conditions.
So when I say I live by this quote, I mean it. I carry it like a seed in my chest, germinating every time I speak, create, or simply exist without apology.
“The Little Girl Inside Me” An Original Poem by: Axton N.O. Mithcell
Dear younger self, you grew up enough to reach the top shelf. The road there was laden with hard lessons, you will wish you got at least one more try at a few, or more. To settle the score.
Kiss mom before and after school, the day will come she’s no longer there physically. You will miss the tedious “annoying” things she did out of love. Arielle don’t worry about making guys you don’t have interest in grow fond of you… This will save you a mess or two. You don’t know who you are, don’t go wondering too far down the road of life without any sense …. self-awareness in needed for you see the other side of me.
Arielle, it will fit like a key. It’s quite humorous, that’s not a name we are used to anymore. When you look inside you at the real me… you will understand. What’s understood doesn’t need explanation.
LoveAdd Axton to the equation and find your true self. You will really know what life is about No one could love you before you knew the real you Split in two denying the fact, you are you. Gets us nowhere. Either way you are still “a real boy” now and forever.
Photo of me at approx. 6-years-old accompanied by a poem by me at 33-years-old original work by Axton N.O. Mitchell
🖤 Help me see it through your eyes. What would you refine or change? links
