Zwischenreich

‘They said the map was complete…

That the borders were fixed in flesh and law…

I am the cartographer of the in-between.

This is my NonBinary declaration of war.’

You drew the lines in prenatal ink, a binary decree,

And built a cage of pronouns that was never meant for me.

You handed me a uniform, a script, a narrow part,

And called it nature’s mandate, the blueprint of the heart.

I tried to wear the costume, to force its fit and form,

Whilest something truer, wilder, weathered every inner storm.

A stranger in the mirror, in the family,and the street,

A dissonance of spirit, both bitter and so sweet.

So I will break the mannequin you polished up for show,

And let the fractured,brilliant light you hid now grow.

This is not a phase of grief,a sickness, or a lie,

It is the self-creation you were terrified I’d try.

I sterilize the scissors that will cut your binding thread,

And from the scraps and splinters,build a bloody soul instead.

Welcome to the Realm Between!

My kingdom of the undefined!

A brutal, gentle masterpiece, Carved from the outcast mind!

You see a wound to pity,

I see a battle scar I own!

The place where I was fractured

Is the place where I have grown!

It is my beautiful disaster,

My chaotic, perfect birth!

The most profound damnation,

And the kindest act on earth!

I am the ghost and architect—

I haunt and build this form!

A calm and raging weather

In a space beyond your norm.

Your ‘compassion’ was a box with airholes,

Your ‘love’ a gilded chain,

A plea to kill the stranger

So the doll could live again.

You mourn a ghost,a fiction,

And I never truly was,

While fighting the emergence

With your politics and laws.

I am not your tragedy,your sin, or your crusade,

I’m the living answer to the question you forbade.

So curse my chosen name,and rage against my truth’s design,

Your venom is the fertilizer for this sacred heart of mine.

To the child I was: I come for you. I am pulling you from the wreckage.

To the world you built: I am the wrecking ball

And the sanctuary,indeed, both.

This is my transformation.

This is my metamorphosis.

This is my transmutation.

I do not seek your mirror.

I have become my own light.

This body is not a temple.

It is a construction site.

And I… I am the ghost,

The worker, and the monument,

All three.

And I am indestructible.

Realm-Between!

I am the borderland!

Intermidst!

The future in my hand!

Shadowsphere!

Neither… and BOTH!

I am my own mother!

I am my own born child!

Screaming into life…

And smiling… all the while.

‘Finally… whole.’