Boys Like Me- (Currently in Development) Illustrated poem
"Boys Like Me" was written and published in The Lab Review in 2018. The next step in this project is to develop it into a fully illustrated work of art alongside other poems and stories following similar themes of community, identity, and grief.
The left hand side shows the text. The right hand side shows samples of preliminary page layouts and artwork.
The left hand side shows the text. The right hand side shows samples of preliminary page layouts and artwork.
Boys Like Me
OLD ALBERT: How did you know?
YOUNG ALBERT: I didn’t know. I just kept moving.
--“BREATHE. WALK. HOME.” THE CIVILITY OF ALBERT CASHIER
I wish I could tell you there were boys like me
With pretty names
Written
On our pretty skin.
I wish I could tell you
How we’d all sit at recess,
Teaching each other to shove our ponytails
Under the ratty baseball caps
We’d been wearing
Ever since our mothers told us
Our worth is equivalent to the length of our hair.
YOUNG ALBERT: I didn’t know. I just kept moving.
--“BREATHE. WALK. HOME.” THE CIVILITY OF ALBERT CASHIER
I wish I could tell you there were boys like me
With pretty names
Written
On our pretty skin.
I wish I could tell you
How we’d all sit at recess,
Teaching each other to shove our ponytails
Under the ratty baseball caps
We’d been wearing
Ever since our mothers told us
Our worth is equivalent to the length of our hair.
We were Rapunzels
Who wouldn’t let down our golden locks
For the princes on the ground.
Instead
We climbed down our own hair
From the towers we’d locked ourselves in
Without realizing the door was open.
Nobody told us.
We became our own princes with the help of Dad’s clippers and safety scissors.
Who wouldn’t let down our golden locks
For the princes on the ground.
Instead
We climbed down our own hair
From the towers we’d locked ourselves in
Without realizing the door was open.
Nobody told us.
We became our own princes with the help of Dad’s clippers and safety scissors.
I wish I could tell you about my art teacher
Going through puberty at 40,
Dotted with acne like the boys in his class
And a voice split right down the middle where hormones cracked open his vocal chords
While he was still in the kiln.
I wish I could tell you how
He taught me
To sculpt armor in the shape of the body I was growing into,
To rub my heart raw onto the canvas of my future until it spelled out LOVE,
To paint myself any color
I wanted
To tell you I sat in church
And heard the pastor tell me
God was all things at once,
A Being uncontainable and unexplainable.
I wish I’d heard him say God loved me more than anything
Because She is a Mother
And a Father
And Their Son was a boy like me.
Going through puberty at 40,
Dotted with acne like the boys in his class
And a voice split right down the middle where hormones cracked open his vocal chords
While he was still in the kiln.
I wish I could tell you how
He taught me
To sculpt armor in the shape of the body I was growing into,
To rub my heart raw onto the canvas of my future until it spelled out LOVE,
To paint myself any color
I wanted
To tell you I sat in church
And heard the pastor tell me
God was all things at once,
A Being uncontainable and unexplainable.
I wish I’d heard him say God loved me more than anything
Because She is a Mother
And a Father
And Their Son was a boy like me.
I wish I could tell you about these boys.
But I couldn’t find them.
But I couldn’t find them.
Instead I stood in front of my mirror after school
With the pink baseball cap
I’d scribbled over with black Sharpie
To match the bruising on my lungs from every time
Someone knocked the wind out of me with the word MISS.
With the pink baseball cap
I’d scribbled over with black Sharpie
To match the bruising on my lungs from every time
Someone knocked the wind out of me with the word MISS.
I watched little girls on TV who looked like little boys,
Skateboarders and hockey players with names like Charlie and Max,
And secretly prayed that just once
She wouldn’t pull down her hair and put on her heels at the end,
So I could see the little girl I always wanted to be.
Skateboarders and hockey players with names like Charlie and Max,
And secretly prayed that just once
She wouldn’t pull down her hair and put on her heels at the end,
So I could see the little girl I always wanted to be.
It took four years
Of trial and error
To find a suit that fit in all the right places
Because no one would teach me
And I couldn’t ask.
I did ask myself
Why my insides always felt like
A puzzle piece impatiently shoved into place
Without realizing that wasn’t its home.
I didn’t see a boy like me until I was eighteen,
Until I was already reaching out of the closet,
When my act of becoming neared its end.
Of trial and error
To find a suit that fit in all the right places
Because no one would teach me
And I couldn’t ask.
I did ask myself
Why my insides always felt like
A puzzle piece impatiently shoved into place
Without realizing that wasn’t its home.
I didn’t see a boy like me until I was eighteen,
Until I was already reaching out of the closet,
When my act of becoming neared its end.
What I’d needed long before
Was a hand like mine
To guide my fingers
The first time I tattooed the word TRANS
On my knuckles for the world to see,
And to bandage those knuckles with hair ribbons and daisies
The first time I came home broken.
Was a hand like mine
To guide my fingers
The first time I tattooed the word TRANS
On my knuckles for the world to see,
And to bandage those knuckles with hair ribbons and daisies
The first time I came home broken.
I’d needed gentle fingers
With ghosts of the same brokenness
To hand stitch me back together
When I accidentally spilled all my guts on the floor
Because they were too heavy to hold inside myself that day,
And a voice like mine
To tell me it was okay for the world to glimpse the chaos in my body.
With ghosts of the same brokenness
To hand stitch me back together
When I accidentally spilled all my guts on the floor
Because they were too heavy to hold inside myself that day,
And a voice like mine
To tell me it was okay for the world to glimpse the chaos in my body.
I’d needed to be taught
To reform the earth from which
The flowers in my chest bloomed,
To reform the earth from which
The flowers in my chest bloomed,
To keep my pink while becoming my blue,
And to love every rainbowed part of me
Beyond what can be known,
And to love every rainbowed part of me
Beyond what can be known,
To trust the roadmap I’d drawn for myself
And stop pretending it was on the backs of my eyelids
Where I could make excuses not to take the first step
Because I couldn’t see the road,
To throw my words up into the stars
For every lost boy sitting on his roof at night looking for a sign.
And stop pretending it was on the backs of my eyelids
Where I could make excuses not to take the first step
Because I couldn’t see the road,
To throw my words up into the stars
For every lost boy sitting on his roof at night looking for a sign.
Boys like me grow up few and far between.
We are not connected by the water of the womb
But the thickness of blood streaked across our chests,
And only by coincidence may we find ourselves bathing in the same pool,
Promising
We will not let each other drown.
But otherwise,
We are reaching down highways and across oceans,
Hoping for just a moment of contact,
Not even knowing if someone is on the other side.
We are not connected by the water of the womb
But the thickness of blood streaked across our chests,
And only by coincidence may we find ourselves bathing in the same pool,
Promising
We will not let each other drown.
But otherwise,
We are reaching down highways and across oceans,
Hoping for just a moment of contact,
Not even knowing if someone is on the other side.
To all the lonely boys like me, little brothers with nowhere to go:
Let me be your lighthouse.
I may have just learned to turn on the light, but I’ll keep shining
So you know where home is.
Even if it is just a glow on the horizon, it will say:
I am alive. I am alive. I am alive.
You will hear it and every bone in your body,
The blood in your veins, the breath in your lungs,
The beat of your heart, the sparkle in your eyes,
They will all learn to say:
I am alive. I am alive. I am alive.
Let me be your lighthouse.
I may have just learned to turn on the light, but I’ll keep shining
So you know where home is.
Even if it is just a glow on the horizon, it will say:
I am alive. I am alive. I am alive.
You will hear it and every bone in your body,
The blood in your veins, the breath in your lungs,
The beat of your heart, the sparkle in your eyes,
They will all learn to say:
I am alive. I am alive. I am alive.
