Until adulthood I was softish kind of boy
Shy – an introvert
When I just wanted to be an extrovert
With an extra X in my genes.

I took the gay route for years –
Best friends with women,
Nuzzled against hard-abbed men
And tried my best to appear
Happy, in the old-fashioned sense of gay,
But I hungered underneath
To have the body of a woman
With the curves and hormones,
And a female perspective of the world.

Luck showered me with money,
And honesty lead me to older trans-women
Who smoothed the path a bit
And guided me towards
My own transformation
And my arrival as an able-bodied
Not man,
Not completely woman,
But the person I was meant to be.

©2024 Carl Scott Harker, author of

Poems of Personal Poverty