TRANS GOTHIC

You wake up to find that you have outgrown your skin. Its old grip is painful, choking. You are suffocating. You do the only thing you can do. It hurts. God, it hurts.

Your shed skin is in the bottom of four garbage bags of clothes. Maybe someone else will have more use for it than you did.

Your new skin is different. Raw. Vulnerable. Better. Sometimes you try to move like you used to and find that you can’t. Sometimes you forget you were ever different.

Your mother is still mourning your death. You keep telling her you’re still alive, in conversations that last too long. It makes no difference. She prefers it this way.

You can see the changes through years of family photos. Not just in your body, but in your eyes: transforming from pinched and shuttered to alive and sparkling, as your family members’ do the opposite.

Your parents tell you that you’ve murdered their child. You’re an only child. You’re still alive. A portrait of you from 10 years ago smiles down from the mantle: Immortal. Unkillable.

Your body is changing. You can feel it in the curve of your body, the turn of your jaw. Every day is exciting. Every day is dangerous.

They hate you. They don’t know you--they’ve never even heard of you. They hate you anyway.

They make up stories about you. The stories are strange. You just need to pee. They hate that you need to pee. They insist you don’t.

Sometimes you forget to be afraid, and you revel in your newfound body, your joyous perfection. They hate that most of all.

They prophesy endless accounts of your death. It hasn’t come true for you yet. It has for others. Every time you meet someone like you, you know another prophecy has been made.

Sometimes you meet someone whose skin is too tight, breathing hard against a flesh prison. Sometimes that person lashes out, in too much pain to think properly. Sometimes that person falls against you. “It hurts,” they say. It does hurt. You know.

You’ve helped others shed their skins now, held them shivering as their synapses adjusted to a new world of overwhelming sensation. You tell them it gets easier. You tell them you love them.