The Prison Before My First Name

There’s a prison before my first name.
I broke from prison khaki shorts, buzz
cut when I turned 18; freed
myself from the uniforms of the school’s cell, but
I had barely outrun the title
engraved on a baton blow, ‘Naai’
embroidered strictly on my budding bosom. I was branded
and booted back into a byre.
So, they can spot blue
in herds of pink, finding a man that was never inside of me:
color-blind tyranny that calls me Mister.

There’s a prison before my first name.
Indignity of my womanhood locked
away in the secret vault of my wallet.
So, I say I forgot my ID
at home—even though I never forget.
The insecurity of transgender existence drapes over my shoulders
and it’s bleak, like their warm eyes that frost
when they see I’m an inmate behind my title.
A fierce lioness they make
into a circus Kathoey.

There’s a prison before my first name.
A wise shepherd who stands before bars
tells me how I am the most delicate flower in a cell,
how pleasing my cage looks
on the outside when a man
pins my head to the ground,
bends me over, sticks
his precious dick inside me.
He can decide whether to wife me, to fuck and chuck, or to mug a fag.

There’s a prison before my first name.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
A businesswoman, a director, a scientist, a president.
I have patched myself up with rat-race crowns.
Tried my best to hide
seams once opened by scalpels
to stuff a woman underneath
my skin, to carve away the wrong feelings.
Still, I sprint upstairs in kitten
heels, then crumble, tumble
down to the stairhead every time,
crashing into those familiar cold rails.

I look upstairs through the bars
before my first name.
A sturdy hand swinging sets of keys tells me:
Why don’t you become a showgirl or something?
Wilting in the river of paper and colorful sweat,
my head does not float.

Illustration by Quim Paredes