Grief Is

By Nine Keys alum Kev O

What do I know about Grief?

Grief is never coming out as trans.
Grief is hiding as a lesbian.

Grief is never having your true adolescence.

Grief is having your peers ripped away from you because you are growing secondary sex characteristics that betray who you know yourself to be.
Grief is being reminded every day that your gender does not have a place in this world.
Grief is holding your piss so that you don't have to be reminded in public that you are in the wrong place.
Grief is long term unemployment because you just can't check a fucking box on a an application.
Grief is getting to the second interview only to be seen as gender nonconforming and they do not want that shit.
Grief is being told you don't exist.
Grief is a lived experience.
Grief is coming out as trans.
Grief pulses in the carotid arteries in my neck that one day will surrender to its insistence to re-cell all of me until I am no longer recognizable as living.