Alex Skinner

Alex is a non-binary trans masc person and is neurodivergent. Alex has found poetry as an outlet to voice the silenced and the confliction of euphoria & dysphoria that come from their lived experience. The poems originate from a series of personal rantings arising from their current mood state. Centering on vulnerability, isolation and anguish that can come from navigating society and themselves.

Call me They

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I am suffocated in your absence.

No, there is no substitute, I do not have an understudy.

She is the smothering cloud in the room.

Imperceptible.

She is incorrect, she does not live here. Please redirect your mail to an alternative address.

I am stifled by her murky overcast.

Its absence is depressing only to myself. Its elements will not travel from mouth to hear. Its syllables remain untasted.

It replaces my name when I am absent. Add me to your urban dictionary, their claims of grammatical inaccuracy are mistaken.

I like how it tastes in my mouth. The feeling as it passes through my lips.

A sweetness, taste buds tingling, desiring more.

An itch at the roof of your mouth. A difficulty to swallow. You seem to be allergic, or is this an intolerance?

Does it hurt you to say it?

How are they seeing me? I am not their miss, their lady, their she. Neither am I He.

I wrote to you in a letter once. Trying to communicate to you.

Don't tell me:

You just don’t get it

I just see you as you

You don’t do all of that

We never had these genders before.

Don’t live here if you don’t like it.

Authenticity you don’t want from me.

You tell me:

You have changed.

I preferred you before.

I was never me. There was no before. You have never known me.

You preferred no one.

Her residence is making this family visitation fatiguing.

In your refusal to participate. I become unwhole.

I am not safe here.

My safety is compromised when I see you.

Let's not create an illusion of family togetherness.

I did not buy this ticket for myself.

I never saw this advertised in the game of life.

I know their expectation, a requirement to minimise, simplify, to pander to their ignorance or unwillingness.

Allowance for another lapse of memory, or error, or misspeak.

Should I make allowances and not defend my very existence?

I must make a decision, to make a correction or deny myself.

What requires more energy is the push back, the correction or allow the incorrect assertion.

Its amendment is demoralising. Put on your armour you are under attack.

Initiate family litigation. And risk becoming rebranded: dogmatic, defensive, argumentative.

But no.

I allow another to go unchallenged.

I let another go.

I attempt to maintain their status quo.

Do they realise that this hurts me, creates a barrier between them and me. A distance that only I can see.

Please, stop saying she.