CW: transphobia, suicide ideation

ㅤㅤI am inside my room today.
ㅤㅤTo my left, there is a window with a tree inside and another, smaller tree to the left. My left, not the tree’s. I like to look at the tree when I am tired, only the one on the right. Looking at the one to its right—the one on my left—makes me tired. It’s really small. Or far away.

ㅤㅤI am inside my room today.
ㅤㅤTo my right, there is a closet. It’s not mine: those are not my clothes, only the ones that I wear every day. They fit, but never well, they don’t fall off but they don’t stay on quite right and itch like hell, or maybe I’m just incorporeal enough that the fibers sink in and suffocate me at a medium pace.

ㅤㅤI was inside my room yesterday.
ㅤㅤTo my left, today, is a whiteboard. To my right, a girl, or a woman. It’s that weird period of time where you’re not quite sure what to use. People call me boy or young man but those words itch like the suit I have to wear. I keep thinking I’ll grow out of them but they’re forever bigger than me and I have to keep padding and padding my suit just to match those labels.

ㅤㅤTo my right is a girl, or a woman. Her name doesn’t itch.
ㅤㅤI will be inside my room tomorrow. It’s the end of the week, which means I get to try on more clothes. They’re too tight and too loose at the same time. When I get home I’ll probably throw them in the basket, then the washing machine, then the dryer, then in front of the closet. I tell myself that it’s easier since that way I’ll never have to open the doors and check inside.

ㅤㅤTo my right is the bathroom. There’s a mirror inside.
ㅤㅤMy room gets too much sunlight, so I close the curtains in the morning and open them in the afternoon. My mom loves to put plants on the windowsill, and I think they look pretty, but they don’t get much sun. Sometimes they look like they’re reaching out to something, and it’s probably the window but I think the leaves point towards the tree to my left.

ㅤㅤIn front of me is a window.
ㅤㅤI was a smart kid, the kind to barely study and still pass with straight B’s. My parents always prided themselves on being lenient compared to others. They brag about how well I do in school despite them never sending me to after-school programs and only hitting me once for every grade I got that wasn’t an A. I was their best fashion piece, a good obedient son who volunteered at the places they volunteered at, always supported them at their events, always dressed in clothes that were too baggy and made me look non-assuming when I would sit down and space out for hours on end. In front of my gravestone, they’ll talk about how I was a smart boy, an obedient son: a tragedy but otherwise unremarkable.

ㅤㅤIn front of me is a window.
ㅤㅤThere’s a smaller window inside it, and I scroll until I spot what I’m looking for. I hesitate for a moment before purchasing it, since it’s not a suit, or dress pants, or cargo shorts. When it arrives at my door, I put it on then quickly take it off, praying that no one could see me from outside and confiscate my manhood learner’s permit.
ㅤㅤI go back to scrolling. Virtual windows into others’ lives go by, and I see all of them foaming at the mouth to “reluctantly” throw me under the bus for some mystical greater good that no one can define. I am a fetish and fetishes aren’t human, so human rights don’t apply to me. I revoked my claim when I decided to try on clothes that fit a little better.

ㅤㅤI am inside my room today.
ㅤㅤI try on the dress again. It lets my skin breathe for the first time, and only then do I notice how suffocating the atmosphere is outside. Everything is concrete, so I preserve my sanity by sitting at my desk where everything is abstract and I can pretend that I am an abstract girl and not a real one. I look away from my digital window and at my very real one at the second, smaller tree. I can’t remember if it’s supposed to have leaves or not.
ㅤㅤSomeone almost sees me this time, and I hurriedly throw the dress into the closet, slam it shut, and barricade it with manly man clothes so it doesn’t escape again.

ㅤㅤI am inside my room today. The curtains are closed.
ㅤㅤI’ve asked my mom to move the plants to another part of the house so they can grow properly. No living being can exist here forever so nothing can exist now, otherwise they’d be stuck on a windowsill eternally reaching towards something else. The room looks smaller with the closet door blocked off, or maybe I’m not used to being so tall.
ㅤㅤI slouch and wear my uniform once again. I curl the corners of my lips and show my teeth as I put on dress shoes and give firm handshakes. I get platitudes about how handsome and dashing I look, and I’m terrified that the door will break.
ㅤㅤAt a certain point, my male meter maxes out and I am verified as a man, given a license of manliness that grows on my chin and rumbles in my throat. I hear my license on the phone, pretend to see it in the mirror to my right, perform it in restaurants. It sits like lead in my chest.

ㅤㅤNo matter how much my mom waters the plants, their leaves always turn yellow, then brown, then brittle. She says I should let more sun in. I’m scared of burning the plants. I open the closet door anyway.

ㅤㅤTo my right is a girl, or a woman.
ㅤㅤTo my left is a window. I can’t see my reflection, because the mirror is behind me. The day I saw the tree regrowing its leaves was the same day I opened the curtain and the same day I climbed out the window to see if I could reach that second tree. I was tired of the first one covering it, but I was also tired just thinking about how long it’d take to reach that tree, to the point where I was so tired of thinking about how tired I would be that I decided that I’d just find out. So today, I put on my dress and walked as far as I could.
ㅤㅤThe grass felt soft beneath my feet and I’d stop to smell each flower on the way just because I could breathe again. With each step I gained more energy, and with each step I got less tired when I thought about how far that second tree was. Maybe it was because my everything was no longer itchy, maybe it was because my old license was no longer weighing me down, or maybe I was just tired of being in my room. The fog started to clear in my mind, and for the first time in years, I saw the sun peeking through. Its warmth enveloped me in a hug and I could finally stand up straight again.

ㅤㅤBehind me is a boy. Or a girl. It’s that weird period of time where you’re not quite sure what to use, where one tastes like lead and the other feels like ripping a bandaid off for the people who claim to have known me as a child. I think that kid is looking at me through a window, wondering how tired I am. I wish I could tell her that I could keep walking forever.

Edited by Ryan Meadows

Artist Statement: With the theme of “Bloom and Wither,” I wanted to explore the experience of withering and how that phase of decay can feel eternal compared to blooming. Stagnation was a big topic that called out to me in this piece, since for me, the state of withering can become intoxicating when blooming carries with it the risk of being plucked. I used this topic to write a fictionalized version of my own life, about the period of time where I was continuously debating with myself whether or not it was worth sacrificing the safe and predictable trajectory of my life in order to explore my identity and if it is even worth pursuing. I settled on depicting a cycle of overthinking that prevents the actual cycle of life from continuing to move, and examining how that might stifle growth and how to eventually move past it.