"The Green Monkey"
It's hard when you're born
technically human, visibly human,
but so weird you don't fit in --
when your body looks female
but your soul feels male,
when you're so smart that
you finish the worksheet before
the teacher finishes handing them out,
when you can hear things that
humans aren't supposed to hear
or say things that everyone claims
only babies can learn to pronounce --
and you can't help but remember
that experiment with the monkeys
where the scentist dyed one of them
and the others tore it to pieces,
when you keep seeing murders
of trans nerdy freakish people
whenever you turn on the news,
when every time that you go out
you feel people's eyes on your back,
crawling over your skin like spiders,
and you don't know why you
seem to frighten them so much
but it's clear enough that you do,
and you can't help but wonder
if you're the green monkey.