“Smile,” demanded the old man, grinning in my direction.
I faked a smile back, feeling my cheek muscles tense with fatigue.
As he shuffled out the door with his frail wife trailing behind,
I began to wonder how many times it had been.
How many old men with their tobacco-stained teeth and smelly hair gel
Had to speak such an old-fashioned thought towards me?
Do I really look the part:
Small, cute, clumsy, easily tricked and manipulated?

 

I don’t dress to look this way.
I don’t eat to look this way.
I don’t work to look this way.
I don’t lift to look this way.
I don’t want to look this way.

 

You have shattered my dreams.
You have erased my vision.
You have cut off my future.
You have tainted my perception of myself.

 

But, no more.
No more will I look at myself through your eyes.
No more will I be hard on myself.
No more will I hate who I am.
No more will I look in the mirror and deny that the man I see isn’t alive.

 

For if I was a man, none of this would exist.
Not the old man, nor his wife, nor your violent eyes peering at me.
I am he; I am me; I am James.