Unstoppable

Don't call me unstoppable
because of what poisoned my veins;
Don't call me unstoppable
because you maintain that I have a 'male frame';
Don't call me unstoppable
because girls like us all have big hands;
don't call me unstoppable
because I 'used to be a man':

you've never seen deceleration
'til you've seen a trans girl breaking,
asking why she's been forsaken
through a face of running make-up,

defeated and retreating from the space we're told we take up,
anticipating beatings from the moment that we wake up
reeling from repeated sneaky
cotton ceiling break-ups,

Wise up! Size up who statistics really favour,
we're more Miss Elizabeth
than Big Van Vader,
you get away with hitting us
by claiming we're a danger
say our inexistence
should be morally mandated
leaving me inquisitive
on why we're highly gate-kept

who
crept
through the hospital doors,
slipping past the smokers outside,
bypassing the wards,
who got to board-level
and kissed some corporate arse,
and got to set the obstacles
that we all have to pass?

Do you think I'm paranoid?
Well, call me Shirley Manson,
'cause I've fought with the dysmorphia
that tells me I'm not handsome,
and coped with self-congratulators
who want me to thank them
for using the right pronouns
when they message me one-handed,

AND this, AND that, and a hundred other things,
I've been knocked flat a dozen times with suffering,
called 'bitch', called 'fat', always called that other thing,
everybody and their cat
thinks I could use some humbling,
is it any wonder that
I often feel I'm stumbling?

And I will stumble,
I will fall,
and I will rise up Phoenix - style
and BE unstoppable

and that's not because I'm stronger,
and it's not because I'm hard,
it's not because blunt trauma hurts less
when your tissue's scarred;
it's not that I'm a mutant,
some majestic weirdo freak,
it's not even because I have a flawless rhyme technique,

no: if I can seem unstoppable
it's because of the things I've been through;
if you must call me unstoppable
it's 'cause what tried to stop me
was you.

*   *   *

I know one often loves one's poems a little too much after first writing them, but right now I feel like filming this professionally with some proper music behind it. Anyone up for helping?