Boyish Thumbs and Open Doors
Tags: Poetry On Medium, Gender Identity, Poetry, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Roles

Untitled by Henry Darger

From the very first day that I was born

My hands started to guide me

Mixing up Barbie's with dinosaurs

My parents did despise it

A girl catching eyes that were sore

Avoiding blues and greens at the store

I played catch with my dad I wanted to make him proud

Said I had an arm like a man

Ball thrown with that whizzing sound

But I had to hide these boyish tendencies like it was contraband

Ain’t that so sad?

Over-sized shirts pulled up; pulling up to school

Spread mascara

Chunky Tennis shoes premature; before it was cool

People cancel that shit thinking they’re God

But I accepted this fate

Both Sodom and Gomorrah

I know they mean well but it’s tripping me up

Don’t know how to behave in this society

Didn’t think a style could be a way to act up

This shit is fucking me up.

Makes me want to get fucked up.

I’m about to act up.

But it’s not acting I’m doing

I’m just playing my own game

Real from the very first grade that’s when

I chose my own name

Now you think that your spells are binding

Think you can try to subscribe to me

A gender dysphoria that ain’t even real

It was only made to kill; little kids and adults from how they truly feel

Filled me up this isn’t a flash deal because it seeks to steal

A true expression

It doesn’t have to be a lesson

It can be learned from the getgo

Cause deep inside I think we truly know

Be it pink or blue

Or yellow too

The world is filled with colors

I can’t stand this rainbow aesthetic

Cancel identity politics but I support this apathetic

Worldview that I begin to hold

Can’t begin to care about the people that are waiting for you to fold

Cause life’s a card game; no confusing rules

Fools we may be but we want to rule; not be ruled.

A king of myself; all I can be

The only person that I seek to please is me

Done pleading with people that propagate this cycle

Oppression is limitation it doesn’t take much imagination

To imagine a free universe

Free from boxes; rid of categories

It’s not hard to believe, but it’s hard to see

Flows of our own nature, but we can set the pace here

Hearing others; listening skills; newly discovered voices yet to be spilled

Got to try and learn from those who are different than me

Different identities excite like snorting

Lines of amphetamines

A rush so powerful it begins to take stride

Cling to it as long as you can

Because there are high and low tides

Turn to this water when you need to confide

What I’ve been confining is simple when it’s all typed out

Pushing buttons on my keyboard these thumbs

Don’t work like a boy or girl

And the brain doesn’t either I just can’t say it out loud

When all of this becomes obsolete and we start to learn

This glass ceiling is something that forces

All of us to conform

Difficult for me to break when it’s intended to comfort

Gives me a straight path; following it like she’s an aristocrat

That both gives and takes

Claims it’s for my own sake

But I’m done closing doors to paths that should be open

Tonight I’ll open the gate

My feet guided by this stake in true fate.

Darger, Henry. “Untitled.” In the Realms of the Unreal, 1892–1973.