Brianna

Style: n/a

Statement: n/a

I did not go gently—

Even when their blades fell like lightning strikes

into my chest, searing wind rushing through me,

I bled, kicked, flailed, seized, screamed hoarse.

Headlines named me “a tragic trans teen victim.”

Victim? For every single day I carried on, pressing

through ceaseless hatred-filled glares and venomous

tirades, caking swollen purple bruises with foundation,

I’m just a victim? For every message I received from

fragmenting, inconsolable kids trapped in the wrong

bodies, wrong families, wrong places, and for every tear

that’s soaked into my shirtsleeve, the pieces I’ve held together,

that’s all I am? Sometimes, I fought, I cried,

but I laughed, I danced, I smiled, true through it all.

I never capitulated, never suppressed, never

went gently. So rage, rage against the dying of my light.