Looking glass, a reflective sheet,

that tells truths hidden behind the lies

that you see yourself as.

You will stare hard at your face,

wonder who you really are,

and if the mirror is really telling the truth.

You like that you can see yourself,

as who you really are

and not as what you think you are.

But sometimes, you hate the truth.

You feel difference inside and it

eats away your mental stability,

making you feel trapped inside a body

that isn't yours.

Another you is gnawing at your insides,

pleading to get out but at the same time

fearing to be seen by others.

But in the looking glass,

all you see is a person that is a lie

and it makes you feel angry.

"Why, why was I born in this body?

Why, why do I have to suffer?"

Confused and lost your mind suggests

maybe you're "the other gender".

But a few years in, testing it out,

and it's not right.

Confused and panicked with people telling you

you are this gender or that gender you can't be neither.

There is no such thing as neither.

You need to be blue or pink or purple

but not clear.

Clear is not a color.

Pushed down, mentally unstable,

you ask the looking glass,

"Why won't you show me the one I am?

I'm not one or the other.

I'm not both.

But I can't be neither!"

You take a chair, smash the glass.

The shards fall into the sink,

clatter onto the floor,

you take a shard and place the blade on your wrist...

but

you

cant

Your tears are lava as they flow down the drain,

hot with anger and confusion,

embarrassment of succumbing to a moment of weakness...

In that moment,

you see you in a shard of the looking glass.

It is you.

You are you.

You are not one or the other.

You are not both.

You are not "neither".

It's just you.

====================

Note: In the past few years, some people have come out as, what others call, "genderless". This poem is imagining how those people came to accept who they are and to also tell those who are suffering that it's okay to not be any gender. You are you and that's what's most important.

"There is no secret ingredient. It's just you." ~Po, Kungfu Panda~

And that's okay.