History

they don’t tell you about the paranoia

it’s always the part they don’t quite get

in the stories, the poetry

the trying-too-hard tv shows

because you just can’t tell

who’s gonna start looking at you

like you’ve confessed to something

and it’s a lot worse than a boyfriend, or a chest binder

you never know

who you need to tiptoe around with half-truths

“my partner and my best friend” -

in the historical sense, I mean

historical- history, because it’s over

forgotten about, wiped out

left to fiction

set back when those things really happened

my people are mentioned exactly twice

in my history textbook

both times, we are “homosexuals,”

in a bracketed list of the massacred

but hey, at least now we can get legally married

and never tell a soul

unless we know which newspapers they read

and we’re sure

lucky us, good thing it’s over

those damn barbarians in the olden days

who’d kill a man for existing

are, of course, all dead and gone

and I’m sure, if I checked

my life expectancy would be just the same as yours

and I if I needed to plan a holiday

I could go anywhere I liked

and if I walked into a servo at 10pm

wearing clothes that fit me right

and used my own damn name to order a coffee

I’d be perfectly safe

I’d be safe, the way everybody is so ready to promise

right up until I exist in front of them

and they realise

I do seem a little weird to them, after all

see, those inalienable rights we’re all supposed to have

just go flying out the window

when you break the contract

and stop counting as human

but hey, if I make it through the years-long waiting list

for the changes I want and the ones I don’t

I can change my legal gender to something else I’m not

and throw a fucking party