KarMel Scholarship 2008

RunnerUp of the “Written” Category

“A Man at Heart”

By Anonymous

Desciption of Submission: “A poem to my mother describing my personal feeling that I was meant to be and consider myself as a man. A feeling I bemonaed very much while growing up especially when I began to develop breasts and when most girls did not show interest in me as being the same gender. I find women terribly appealing not only aesthetically but in a purely sexual and excitingly sensual affectionate light. I have felt all my life and with all my heart that I am supposed to be a man as though someone had erred in creating me a woman.” - Anonymous

Why Karen and Melody Liked It: We liked how it showed transgender struggles and the pain associated with trying to get one’s family to recognize a new gender.

I saw them popping up on my

Flat chest

Day by day and dreaded

What would come tomorrow.

Tomorrow came and I wondered

Why I could not have been a boy,

With all my heart breaking,

And all my estrogen-laden tears falling.

I wondered why this life was forced

On me and I could not be fighting roughly

With the boys back in yesterday

Without the blooming female way I was becoming.

The self in the mirror looked back and

I kicked it, soul burning red and hard with hate

Without wanting to break it,

But kicked anyway in anger.

The face in the window looked back and

I kicked it in pain at the

Ripping sickness inside my stomach

And cracked the grimaced face in pieces.

I paid for that window Mom, but what I meant

Was that I was falling apart inside

And could not get

Out of this stranger’s body.

I longed to be the person

A man I felt I truly was.

And day-by-day I lived

Another life.

Watching the men with inspirations

And sighing after women.

I could not be hard but fell softly.

Into the rough suffering seas

Of my thundering male heart.

And live in confusion.

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