The Dark Prince - Anonymous Trans Poetry

Every time I breathe now it hurts,
like I have been holding in my breath for
hours, days at a time. Exhaling feels sensational
until the burning takes me and I double over
in agony.

Each time I think of you and how much
you look like the person you want to be
I think, again, about myself. How I
am confused and lost.

Each time I am shoved into those
skin tight clothes, hugging every curve of
my body. I think back

to when I was a small child
hoping someday that with the development
of the womanly curves that I too would
feel like I belonged. But now I wish
I could go back to then, when I was
just a little girl, wishing she could be
a prince in the castle on the cloud.

I still, holding in my air, and think
to the boy, to "the dark prince".
I remember hiding under a blanket with
him, and us sharing what we had underneath
all those little children's clothing.

I always wondered why I didn't look like him.
He was "the dark prince", and I always
wanted to be the prince too, but he always said no.
He said girls were princesses, and I didn't want to hear it.
I knew I was a prince at heart.

And no one understood.

As I grew it was shoved,
shoved into the back of my mind like
so many other things.
I had finally learned the role I was
suppose to play, and ran with it.

Days turned to weeks,
weeks to months,
and months to years.
It was not forgotten, but more
stored away, until one day
I thought of it again,
and I was back at his house
under that blanket, wanting
what he had. And I inhale sharply.

Minutes go by, and finally letting free
my chest burns. Burns with the thought
of all of this.

But then a wandering boygirl came to me
and showed me that

hiding was not necessary, that I could be
who I was without shame.
And I saw them transform, but still holding my breath
I hid. Not sure of what was truth and what was fiction.
Was I really the prince in a castle on a cloud
or a grown woman trying to make her life difficult?

I don’t know if I will ever know the answer,
I will just have the memories of the "dark prince",
and all my questions, locked into one.