A Love Song to My Shortness
Being short used to be my biggest insecurity
Because it was not very gender affirming –
Other boys towered above me like basketball nets.
If I would’ve looked up into their eye,
Pity would’ve punched holes in their sockets.
Before the tallest among them knew I was trans,
He didn’t see me as separate from him & his friends.
But when he found out,
He said "we’ve got *expletive* Terry on our team" in a PE football lesson.
I let him look down on me and laugh
When he noticed I was right behind him.
I don’t think that, when I was in sixth form,
Pupils would’ve poured water over my bag and chucked orange peel in the stall I was in,
Told their friends they could hear me pooing,
Making me scared to come out
If they didn’t look down on me.
*
But volunteering in a nursery at uni,
The kids were fighting
To hold my hands and sit on my lap.
I think my shortness was a contributor –
I wasn’t far off their height,
Wasn’t high above their level,
So they weren’t intimidated by me,
Could easily approach me.
Now people are only looking down at me
And I am looking up at them
In a literal sense.
I love being a little man.
I love getting to be at the front in photographs,
Not needing to duck under low doorways,
Having tall people’s pretty belts in my pretty eyes.
Although it’d be to try out being tall,
I’m happy being short.
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