If you look at my body, just the outside,

You will find wrists with transparent skin.

Veins of seafoam, lavender and periwinkle flow through them like rising rivers,

Travelling around sunlit sandbanks 

And into the fat beneath my thumb.

You’ll find hands stained with my schoolwork,

Freckles from hours of work in the golden sun,

And evidence of days that could have been better.

If you look at my body, just the outside,

You will find rigid ribs jutting out like the teeth of a beast.

Hips curved inwards, showing the skeleton within,

A flab of meat attached to both breast bones.

You’ll find legs that don’t quite fit my figure, 

As if I was a broken Ken doll,

Weak arms and thin skin.

If you look at my body, just the outside,

You will find a head lit aflame with a raging fire

that has been burning since 2005.

You’ll find almond-shaped eyes, 

the irises changing colors quicker than the seasons of Wisconsin,

And a maw with cracked lips and animalistic fangs. 

If you look at my body, just the outside,

You will find that I look nothing like any regular guy.

So you’ll cut me open with the tools of a surgeon, and you’ll look inside

Only to find one barely functioning, fleshy male brain,

And one still-beating heart.

And you’ll find that pulsating organs represent me more

Than this shell of a “female” body, assigned to me 

As I was pushed through the womb.