Poem about gender dysphoria: Moth

Photo by Christy Rice at Pexels

Benji Jakab Marton explores the pain of puberty, in conflict with gender identity

It’s the kind of pain that
bleeds through the skin
I scrape my fingernails
over the hollow of my throat,
and the urge to press lingers
like an itch to be scratched.

It hit me in the summer of
two-thousand eleven
that no prayer would keep
me from the growth spurt
inevitable to the pituitary gland:
A cocoon tore wide open.

I grew, and I grew grotesque
in all the wrong ways;
the blossom of a young woman
burns down in fifteen years,
and soft valleys of plump flesh
swell with no bristles on face.

Just on legs. Razor bumps to
impress my mother, and hang
onto my promise, I’ll be so
divine, cause no such pain,
keep my hair long, head high.
I know larvae turn into butterflies.