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Transcription: [00:32:10]
[[applause]]

[00:32:16]
{SILENCE}

[00:32:19]
{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
One more poem. Are y'all still good? Hydrated? Good.

[00:32:24]
Um. So, I was talking about the different parts...um...

[00:32:29]
The different parts of my life where I write poems to my father, um.

[00:32:33]
I actually will be back on the stage at 2:45 with Regie Cabico

[00:32:36]
uh, we're doing a conversation on what it is to be Filipino and queer and other poems, so

[00:32:41]
[clears throat] I will do the other poems there, but, uh, I wanted to do this poem because

[00:32:44]
particularly now in my life, uh, I just started identifying as being trans about a year ago

[00:32:50]
and, um, it's not something that I have come out and told my parents yet because

[00:32:54]
coming out as being gay was hard enough and that took about ten years of healing.

[00:32:59]
Um, so I'm going to do this poem now which is the first poem I've ever written

[00:33:03]
about identifying as being trans

[00:33:05]
Um, sort of... to my father hoping he hears me all the way in California.

[00:33:11]
{SILENCE}

[00:33:16]
Some nights,

[00:33:18]
I wake up choking to the woman inside of me trying to claw her way out of my mouth.

[00:33:24]
She waits until I am sleeping because it is the only time I do not try to forget her.

[00:33:30]
Sometimes, when I am alone, I can hear her weeping in between the times I inhale and exhale.

[00:33:37]
When I bind my chest, I feel more than just the suffocation of my body,

[00:33:42]
I feel hurt inside of me, gasping for air.

[00:33:46]
I know she is terrified I am trying to squeeze her out of me for good.

[00:33:50]
For a while, I tried. I swallowed her in front of other men to not seem weak.

[00:33:56]
I stiffened up every time I felt her welling up behind my eyes.

[00:34:00]
Used her as a scapegoat the times anger was the only prayer in my mouth.

[00:34:04]
Blamed her for the depression, the anxiety, the dysphoria,

[00:34:08]
the dirty looks in public restrooms and fitting rooms for being a goddamn box

[00:34:12]
To check on paperwork, I hated her for having the audacity to stay

[00:34:16]
even after I demanded her to leave.

[00:34:19]
I also mourned, and I grieved.

[00:34:23]
I didn't know how to say goodbye, I didn't know if I had to.

[00:34:28]
When my therapist told me I have internalized misogyny, I cried.

[00:34:34]
Until the woman in me finally poured out my eyes and onto the floor

[00:34:38]
She has never said I told you so, she has only ever offered me a book of poems

[00:34:43]
written by the person I used to be, and now, here, in front of this mirror that I

[00:34:47]
that I begged to tell me lies,

[00:34:49]
I am desperately looking for something that resembles something familiar

[00:34:52]
but I've only ever performed by poems in a higher pitch and I fear a lower frequency

[00:34:57]
will have me relearn what it means to be quiet when all I want to do is scream

[00:35:02]
I am here, this is me, but my refusal to remember her is also my refusal to become a man

[00:35:07]
who does not fall victim to fragile masculinity, to be a man

[00:35:11]
does not mean to forget all the parts of me that is woman, that is soft,

[00:35:15]
that is compassionate, that is the only version of myself that I have ever been damn proud of.

[00:35:19]
To become the day, that I can embrace my femininity, will be the day I have stepped

[00:35:24]
into my true masculinity.

[00:35:26]
I would be lying, if I said the noise of patriarchy does not keep me up at night sometimes

[00:35:32]
I let her out before I go to bed, we do not speak.

[00:35:36]
I do not remember the last time I looked her in the eye but she just lies

[00:35:40]
next to me, quiet, she puts her arms around me and reminds me I am not alone and

[00:35:45]
Sometimes, it is the only time I can be put to sleep.