• there is a story within me
• about dangerous trans girls
• femme butch and enby alike

//

• girls with fire in their tear-brimmed eyes
• and dreams that strike hunger in their stomachs

//

• girls with scars and knocked-out teeth and bum legs
• and a scrappiness, a willingness to fight like hell

//

• girls with knives and baseball bats and chains
• and graffiti and bad tattoos and arrest records

//

• girls who half-jokingly intone black magic at each other
• and set curses on their enemies

//

• and i both am these girls and i am not
• because i have lived a thousand permutations of the same story
• but not quite the dangerous one it feels like i have to tell
• because my life has been a different kind of hell

//

• and i almost wish i could travel to that mythical land i envision
• because then things would at least make sense.
• the danger i have lived is a social and emotional one
• it would be easier to actually have the enemy outside the house.
• and i sit and i tell myself
• its disrespectful to tell this story
• you haven’t actually lived like this
• but it is my story

//

• because i am one of those dangerous trans girls
• with hot blood surging through their veins and fire in their belly and the scrappiness to survive.

//

• the time is coming soon enough
• where i will need to be dangerous
• whereas until then every time i have fought like hell
• and authority or my conscience (the traitorous bastard) has told me
• to roll over like the good trained mutt you are
• has convinced me to stop, convinced me to hide myself beneath a dozen layers of falseness
• soon enough
• it will be time to be dangerous.

//

• soon
• i will say
• “enough.”

//

• and although my destiny has not yet arrived
• the fire in my belly is building to its raging crescendo
• and the hot blood is coursing, surging life-giving feeling through me
• and the tears are brimming, filling the aquifer in my heart

//

• it will be here soon enough

//

• and while i worry that it is all talk
• that i do not have it in me to fight
• to stand tall and proud and dangerous
• and risk the little safety i have

//

• the time will come, and i, whoever i am in that moment, will have to be enough.

//

• and i will be reborn a bloodsoaked phoenix
• that is good enough, strong enough, willing enough
• to say
• “enough.”