Yasmine Tadross

When my body is reduced to body parts, When gender is to the surface, People go straight to you body part, because that is the only thing that is validating, As I came out of the whom, I was birth-assigned male only to come to terms with the fact that I am a woman, The discrimination is prevalent, But the one thing that gets to me Is when a mother covers the eyes of your young daughter in order to protect her from me When I go to the bathroom, woman's eyes turns into shock horror because I somehow invaded their space you see, once your body is marked at birth, one can't get outside of it Each day it gets harder to fight because I don't know a day where I am truly whole This brown skin and this aching disconnected self I will fight for myself and for my Queer and trans siblings of color In my own way because rallies are too numbing for me We will strut one step at a time and let DT45 know that we are still here Your group of people can not

I live in a world where the representation is greater than the reality, My body is limited to my lipstick and a pill that one injects every day When neither is on me my body can't obtain the experience My identity goes beyond a pussy hat I have African Roots with the Arabic tongue I hear the drums rain And my grandmother's spicy foul medemas is in my blood With our daily bread When one can't find community, They spend money that they don't have because the only thing capitalism is good for is feeding off the lonely I was born in a post 9/11 nonnormative female body Where my lifespan does not go beyond the age of 24 Our image is only seen as five slashes and a gunshot to the head and bliss is just an illusion My liberation does involve going to a big city Where white gay men think your obsessed with RuPaul's Drag Race and your identity revolves around spending money on Maybelline cosmetics When one can't find community, You just grab the bits