I awake in the morning, spreading my legs out of my queen bed. Squealing, I unstick saliva from my teeth. Then, I prune my fuzzy-luscious hair so that the tangles of the morning reveal the true fang-like flows and shiny, archy bristles that spring from my face. I feel strange—I don’t think my face was this soft, or that my shirt clung to me as it does now. Looking down at the ruffled fabric flowing around my breasts, I shoot up, baffled. I didn’t have any photos of me until a few years ago—I never took any. I couldn’t recognize who I was looking at after. And yet I know this is wrong, that this is not my body. I only look like this when I let my mind wander, when I squint my closed eyes further, into the world of my slumber. But I am awake, and still—I look like the girl in my dreams. Some unseen marvel illuminated this hidden me. Starstruck in the morning—the louder than usual chirp of creatures begins the day. I open my window, greeting the dawn as I feel its vast, varying reds blooming on my skin. The wind kisses my hair. I look back, already smiling, to see where that rich glow guides. Glimmering then, is my mirror depicting a marvelous Miss me. I stare, standing enchanted there. I cannot believe I finally like what I see reflected. Again the breeze beckons me, teasing my neck, urging to see after so long—my romantic, wanting eyes. I look out, gloating a smile to the skies, I couldn’t see until now: the world there under is all but mine.

           For the first time, all observable things are now this prism, refracting their sublime sight upon everything nearby. The half hour of my life when I’d flutter along to school is now decorated pristine, and I’ve all but lost myself! Dread meeting delirium—there spawns in me an irrational fear: I will see my friends, and then my dream will perish, and I’ll wake, finding only the burn from hitting my head on the ceiling. My friends then, seemingly summoned, are with me on the main road together, screaming like they haven’t seen me in years. “What happened to you?!” they ask, in love with my look, wrapping their arms around me before I can speak. They hold me tighter today; it feels like we are closer today. They hug and look at me like they do each other—as if it has always been this way. Today, the giant hill before my school is less daunting. I’ve never spoken in the years I’ve taken this path, but the girls chatter, they turn to me, and now they’ve locked arms with me. How can I reject them? I join them in their singing and humming as we climb, and now we’re prancing and bopping like flowers. We hold hands, squeezing tighter through sweat—until the top is ours. It feels sweet, like being a kid—but different. We part ways. I want to savor the day, so I say goodbye to go sit under the petal droppings of the tree that beckons towards our Academy’s doors.

The bench warps around my figure; it remembers me. I feel a warmth on my bottom as it rests against the grooves like the feeling from a sunk couch that someone you love has pressed and molded with you. The pink from the petals goes with the color on my fingertips. I smile at the tree: alive with its slithering trunk, bending up and down and to the right and looking like it’s reaching for its own seat on the bench with me. I cross one leg atop another, swinging the heel of my red platform. It’s then that angelic sounds pierce me. And all around are doves and eagles, songbirds and swans, hummingbirds and flamingos: they flutter, frolic and float around me. They’re beautiful; they’re colorful and curious, stoic, wise—and vibrantly alive. I sit in awe of this natural beauty, all of them born right and strong—distinct beings that amassed into a wonder of the world that cannot be replicated. My eyes grow huge in distant adoration. Those beautiful beings begin to dock in front of me, my skin spazzes and stiffens—I’m not meant to be this close—it’s terrifying. Then, more to my side, rising pitches in my ear, admiring through touch—my hair and shoulders. I didn’t realize it until now, but somehow, sometime today, my own feathers have begun to show. I am one of them, but the stiffness remains. I am granted for the first time the comfort of another’s fluffy bosom: they nuzzle my heart, sweetening my name to others nearby. I don’t understand the praise—it feels like pressure. But they salve and preen me, so the hull of that reluctant feeling gives in, and as they leave—happy with the state they left me in, I begin to feel a dizzying guilty pleasure.

I grasp my precious yellow notebook in hand, and begin to burn circles on the cover with a finger. Pulled to the red nails I’m trying out—I feel then, that I am very vulnerable, and visible. My choices, my look, my interests, even the hues I adorn—they all cast to the world a truth of my heart. Without a word, it’s possible for people to see me, even to allow their hearts to fall in love with some of me. I slip my red edge under the cover, flipping the ninety pages that precede a blank, this was from me, I have surely written this, and so I have surely been. There’s messy handwriting and bored fantasies. I remember myself. There’s plastered song lyrics in bubble letters. I feel warmth return with drawings and stickers. I see a tendency for red ink, and cherry fruits. I see hours of study and notes of future ideas. For months and years past, I have existed. I see me. I feel the color from every page, I feel the pressing of every stroke on the page, like the beauty of braille—a tactile tenderness. What I see when I reach the blank—is the girl who has been here all this time. I click my pen, stopping as my face pinks again from the intimacy of embarrassment. Resolving to persist, I think, and then turn to ink; this: 

What a wonderful day it is—when there are girls all around me,

What a wonderful day it is—when pink and red are all around me,

What a wonderful day it is—because we are always who we please,

What a wonderful day it is—because deep within I finally cease not to see—

And I whirl in my heart who I get to be.

Oh, what a beautiful day…

And I will dare too, to say:

Oh, how wonderful—am I.

Noon nears, and I know then that the library has opened, and I can head over to throw myself into the commands of study. On my walk I do not dodge the falling leaves, with different colors clad. My next step clops louder. I feel a confidence form for the very first time. Under an arch, just outside of a club I frequent, a familiar girl has been standing, waiting. She’s smiled at me before, many times, coming to me after class, asking for answers to “question ten”. Why it took her until the last question to get confused, I don’t know. Today it seems we’ll talk outside for the first time. As my steps resound, and my eyes that fall a touch deeper, darker, and less diverted met with hers, I see something I’ve never seen in someone else: wonder. The gap in her lips teases words, but none come. She gives me a letter officiated with an orange heart seal. I feel my own heat pass through the paper back into my hands. I turn the flap to find a love poem. She saw me yesterday, and waited for me today. She heard me before and wants to hear from me again. I had not known I was even a person, and even still it happened.

I have pierced her.

 Before the girl, I straighten myself, allow myself to be taller. I don’t want to stand still anymore, ever again. I want to let feelings become actions, I want to go with the wind. We had time before class. My stomach hungers, I tell her we should go somewhere, and so we have a date. We go to a popular place just a few blocks away from school. She tells me all it took was the first sight, she insists she knows her own heart—and so, she’s liked me since the start. An impossibility has been rectified, and suddenly here, in the booth, I begin to feel very, very hungry. So voracious are we—ignoring the menu, swallowing instead each other’s every word. How eager, so ardent to hear more—the breath of our lips rushing—so that the next word will come. And instead of licking our lips for a flavorful dish, we satiate our long hankerings with the glint in the other’s eye. I tell her my loves, my hates, worst deeds, and all of my dreams. She tells me of cringey phases, embarrassing stories, and tales of boys that bore me. We giggle, recounting the tropes in our past courtings and false personas. Our chirp collides into a harmony, and our faces seem to meet for the first time. Nothing is really funny anymore. I feel perverse, but justified. She pretends not to reach for my hand. I let it brush against hers. After a long while, she says to my lips that she likes romance, and the color red too. I’m so sick of these sore smiles—of this hunger that went beyond not having eaten. I lean, looking at the girl who was so honestly offering herself to me, I ask “What are you really trying to say?” My breath meets hers. I feel my own voice hit me. She says with wide, wonderful eyes that she wants to see me again. I see my reflection in her pupils. Mine turn big too, as I realize the girl inside those eyes staring back is really, just so beautiful. Who I am now, I cannot believe.

I leave my number as I pace down the cobble. The sun is at its highest in the sky now, and I have learned that it’s possible for the unnatural to be adored. I look back as the entrance to the bold restaurant closes. It’s adorned in two dominant colors, staunch with tradition. When I get out of my last class, I’m embraced by the above. The yellow and oranges are starting to stretch and slant, I try to love things while they are here. My feet are beginning to hurt. I answer a call from my friends. They “miss” me: “Come to this party! You’re so cute today! Everyone’ll love you! We’re telling these girls all about you!” 

I flip the phone shut, clutching my heart. Today’s marvels coalesce into a euphoria so overwhelming that noise leaks out of me. I don’t want today to end; I want more. The blue and purple may be coming soon, but tomorrow like this, I’ll enjoy another red, orange and yellow again. When I get to the door, it seems to open itself. Dozens of eyes to the noise, beam with glee. As I take the first step towards the scene— 

 I have become everything I ever wanted. 

The dream is finally real, and with the same fantastical colors and creatures—I belong. This is the Red Planet, the lakes of love that I have always desired—the Ball, the banquet of my dreams. The entire world has melted into one stimulus, one hive—Every girl here is a queen bee. I pace through exhausts of flame that tease my face—the eternal light show means the party, the love never ends. Every glass and chandelier has a partner that clinks against the pair; hit with light, refracting every lovemaking into our eyes. I adore every breath, I love the life of love—a life with Feminine’s highs. I feel every rein rush, I have accrued an excess of euphoria. It comes with a pang. It is time for the gravity of the moon to pull on me through the windowpane in the ball. I look up, the purple has come. I’d felt nothing but warmth today, but really, it’s been getting cold, recently.

Stopping my dance, I feel a pricking on my pores. I have been holding another girl’s coat. I look, towering taller, peering heads for the owner. I see how loosely others dance with abundant friends. I wonder why their clothes don’t look as uncomfortable as mine, which were falling the entire night. So passionately they party—my smile rises halfway before dipping. I slow, feeling then my shoulders big and bulky, colliding against someone slimmer and smaller. I can’t find the girl, nor my friends. I search again, to the front and the back, to my sides and back again—spinning in an erratic dance of my own. I begin to itch—my heartbeat resounds louder than music. My frantic turn stiffens, as I stand alone in the middle between two halves of the room, not knowing where to go. My stomach bloats against the shirt that I had rolled down. The cold dread of the moon’s luminance turns into a humiliating heat. I itch again, all over. I need the restroom. I shamble, squinting at deep purple lights. Memories of mother prods my rashing skin—her brushing my hair so early in the morning that I cried when she’d wake me to pull and tug and yank on my scalp, only to shove the mirror to my eyes and realize that I still didn’t think my face was forgivable. I hit the door open, relieved I can tend to my humiliation in private.

Crusting, rotten petals fall to the floor: ornaments once mounted on the ceiling. Blue, purple, and white flashings and miasma pollute the room. Let me just fix my hair clip. No—my wig is tangled. Damnit! My bangs aren’t right! Was my skirt this revealing before? My bra is pathetic. It’s so obvious I have nothing under it. Any semblance of hips is gone, what did I even see in this outfit? That isn’t even the worst offense. I had forgotten the look of my face as I fell in love with myself anew, but I look finally—truly—into that faithful mirror, and feel the affliction of the void, swallowing up all that is good and real, leaving only a familiar horror. My limbs stiffen, my breathing coarse. Midnight undid my magic. I am falling apart.

I’m forced to fall. My countenance brings me to collapse on the cold, cracking tile. Fingertips cling to the counter, holding on for some savior to tell me in my ear I am truly who I wish. The mirror rejects me; the world of what if’s shatters—reeling from my mind only the sharpest shards of that broken world. The pitiful sculpture now unbecoming of the beauty in its making. I feel the shrapnel from the shock in my heart pierce the lungs too. Every humiliation returns, I look in the dark—I am still that little kid that doesn’t know they are a tragedy.

My beautiful lips—discolored and lifeless;

My beautiful hair—short and choppy, blunt and prickly;

My beautiful body—flat and rectangular and stubby and ugly;

My beautiful legs—perverted with stubble, and lacking plump life; 

My beautiful face—grotesque, stretched wide with pressings of bone on my cheeks;

My beautiful self—insulting, pervasive and pitifully degenerate. No longer pink or red. Just grey and black and rotting and unnatural and tortured and masculine and unforgivably—  uncontestably—terribly, terribly male.

Male.

The man in the mirror steps in for the glimmery girl in the mirage. My costume is blatant—my pained voice cuts through pop music. Heels hurt too much, my makeup is unfixable, I cannot perform. There’s something wrong with me. I am unable to continue pretending…

That I love who I am, that I know who I am.

That I have friends like you, that I get to exist like you.

That I think I am just like you, that I am as pretty as you.

That I get to believe I’m wonderful, that I get to belong like you.

I tremble in the cold, crisp air. The weight of my heart paralyzes me to the floor, a toxin rushes, dirtying my blood. I am friends with everyone here, yet I feel completely invisible. I turn on my ribs, crawling to my bag that has fallen near, ravaging for my notebook. I grasp for it as it slides away. I flip through in chunks—oh my god how hard I throb, feeling my happiness wilting, robbed from me again. I rip a page, tearing apart the sweet little thing that has treasured the pretty perfect side of me. I lost my pen—I hijack a half pencil I find in my bag. My fingers slap the paper down. Out comes from my deepest pits, the harshest etchings:

GET ME OUT OF THIS HORRIBLE SKIN. I’M NOT SO TALL—AND BIG—AND ROUGH—AND CRUDE—

Why do you keep me here, in a dark corpse, so brutish and rotten, devoid of sweetness? Inside I pump and pulse in agony, wheezing in rejection, digesting but still thirsting, twitching hard for what I really need. Shave sprawning hairs, bind your obvious tells, stay chaste with food, lest this waist fattens more, and you embolden the beast you are, even more. I hate you for lying, and not trying—being something you’re not meant to be, and wasn’t born to be. Just go on and die. Let me be and shed free—I want only to fly these wings—so pretty, under me. But I despise who I see—I cannot shatter and claw that horrid face. Because you took it all, and I bleed, chopping and erasing growth and seeds. And I sob when you return, thinking you were burned. Nobody can love me like this. 

 I am not even human—

I want to be a girl for a little longer. I want to feel soft for a little longer. I want to look cute for a little longer. I want to be cared about for a little longer. I want to talk with people like me a little longer. I want people to like me for a little longer. I want to be ME—

for just a little while longer.

I run out of page. I stay sprawled there, until my skin becomes dead with the cold. I look over to the page—ends ripped violent like a wolf’s teeth. The hard wind forces the bathroom window open. I watch, too heavy to move as the pale full moon howls—whisking up the paper to swallow my heart’s excretions. I stay still, until the numbing in my skin buzzes too loud. It’s time to go home. I leave without saying bye—nobody would recognize me now, anyway.

I wake up feeling rotten. I sit until noon, watching the window and breathing in the oranges. My eyes tremble for a moment. I get up to try something on. Exposed and naked, I lift my arms, slipping the shirt down like water in a stream. Softness returns. I grip onto the smile that wants to hope. A rip—a tear—I grate and rupture. My shoulder regresses into a brutish, penetrating spear. Anguish rushes up. I give up again after all. The blue in the sky gets to me first this time. It’s cold now, and I’m tired now. I guess I’ve gotten exhausted; I wind up in bed again, and it stings—I don’t feel like myself again.

But it will be okay.

 I feel dumb for liking what I do, no ‘girl’ likes it too, but if doing what I want is the only thing that soothes—then maybe that’ll do. I decide to write in my cute little notebook, ‘cus I love it so. I pass where the rest of a page hung before, and write next-over: “I am still here.” I brush my hair. I wear a cute pin. I practice singing. I read my favorite book. I drink a cold soda. Tomorrow I have class again. Tomorrow I can try makeup again. Tomorrow I can wear a cute skirt again. Tomorrow, I can write in red again. Tomorrow I can be myself again.

Tomorrow, when it’s warmer—maybe I will get to be a girl again.

Edited by Cailey Niandrea Pasco and Ella Wu

Artist Statement: For me, being feminine comes at a cost- when I tire, a sense of inadequacy floods the weakened walls. My self expression and how I present itself- comes at a bloom, and wilts away until I can recuperate the energy to bloom again. Being a girl is my spring and winter- wilting away the hours of effort reveals the roots of a boy- that remain shivering and moldy- black and rotten, until the next spring, when surplus petals fall from my pink blossoming.