Poem: I Promise to Be Your Voice: My New Year Resolution for 2016

I Promise to Be Your Voice

I read about you, in Africa, sweet angel now in heaven.

They cut your penis off, and you bled to death. Your family blamed all the bad things of the world on your birth. That you were supposedly a curse to this world, simply because you were born intersex. They left you for dead, and then you died broken in your hospital bed. Where even there they would not care for you right and no one visited you. Sweet man, I am so sorry this world did that to you, and wanted you to be a girl.

I promise to be your voice.

My sweet intersex cousin, who was born ten years after me.

They name you Paul, then they turned you into Paula. What the hell were they thinking? I am sure they justified cutting yours off too. But they were doctors, and got away with it. It was no doubt, for your “own good”. Your parents loved you. There were no laws to protect you. You died too young. I never did get to meet you.

I promise to be your voice.

To all those transgender people who ended their lives.

Because their bodies were supposedly wrong; such sorrow and pain. To be outcasts, and thrown away from your family. To be hated by those who should have loved you the most. To be raped, beaten, medically abused, and murdered too.

I promise to be your voice.

To the sweet little boy who I use to be.

I remember your tears, your shame that you did not appear as your brother. His body was so different, and yet the same. He was given the family name to keep; you lost your right to that one. How they made you feel less than, broken, delusional and insane. They sent you to doctors and psychiatrist to fix you. They locked you up, cut on you, and poisoned your body. This world made you feel you had to live the life of a woman. Your sister and countless others disowned you. It did not matter that it almost killed you. You can finally come home to your body now, and be whole.

I promise to be your voice.

To all those countless victims, violated, past and present. There are just too many to count. That even the United Nations has stepped up to try to stop the tragedy of it all.

I promise to be your voice.

To all my dear intersex friends, who have been violated just as horrifically. Your human rights taken from you because there were no laws to protect your body.

And now, you somehow survive to shout from the rooftops….