Being Non-Binary

Being Non-Binary

Keira Myles

Isolated existing felt Wrong

to many but myself.

Their youth’s isolation

remained tethered to

their state of being

in a way

that spiraled even more strongly

to additional cautionary

corona quarantines.

Floating in limbo

like a thin veil of fog

atop a seeping canyon

everlastingly encompassed

my sense of me.

And at times

during these last two years

of pandemic purgatory

I would think

my hyper-isolatedness

adequately responded to

global pandemic

happenings.

But then again

they’re never normal.

Perpetually periphery.

Whatever that May Mean.

Comfort in loneliness came easy

in childhood, as

the fringes, the edges

felt like the center.

Always onlooking,

peering, questioning,

seeking.

Never quite Here.

Never quite One.

Never quite Whole. 

How-tos of interaction

never quite clicked.

But I might’ve not wanted

to mend these Rights & Wrongs

of my skewed how-tos.

With time’s flickering tick

I could’ve instinctually Known.

Looking back I always Knew

how to exist detached from the Script.

I realized I’ve quarantined

for eternity

My 20 years of Being

to swim in a sea of nothing—

a child curious of everything!

existence! information! learning!

laughing with my other

‘boy’ish elementary ‘girl’friends

and playing handball

and scraping my flesh on the concrete.

Now that hand adorns

a jagged scar

from my enlivened, raw, playful days

where my body was a vessel for my

playful spirit unconcerned with exterior perception

always trying to find and create a sense of joy for myself.

I had this magical gift that when I felt whole and One

inside, it dissipated to those around me

and that’s when I existed best and presented most authentically to this world.

Growing up in a hyper-conservative

and cis-heteropatriarchal

and Catholic community

I felt outside and untrue.

What it means to BE?

What it means to human?

And those moments where I found

a sense of freedom, expression!

Were met with the same

— if not more violently intense —

response of guilt and shame

for my simple being.

Hatred of Me.

Hatred of Being.

Pushing to Be.

Trying to accept myself.

Trying to make others accept me.

Capital White Womanhood

inflicts a storm of rules

upon its prey.

As I’ve evolved through time

I’ve embodied yet broken them

all.

In pushing back against

this supposed Way

I’ve found my

soul in the depths of the lonesome.

My journey into the

Queer and Non-binary

molded me into a lone wolf.

I hated myself for

being a monster.

Why did I hide away for

so long?

Why do I still hide?

At that Dyke march

surrounded by those

unapologetically themselves,

who crossed mountains,

drowned in misery’s dark pits,

and made Herstory

— who experienced depths of

trauma and rage —

still found and spread

an all-encompassing and

Enlightening (but gay)

path to love themselves,

to love others,

and make the moment

a never-ending galaxy of

support and bliss.

To discover this love

for oneself, when told to

see disgust in failure of the ‘Woman,’

means one’s heart embraces

the Warmth of the Sun.

I felt the freest of free.

The Non-Binary, the Lesbian, the Gay

Way is all I need to Be.

My soul has crawled through trenches

of shielding myself from people

so warped with mythologies of

what it means to Be.

Out of a community

exhibiting the epitome of hatred

toward the different,

I became so quiet.

In that hiding was time.

Time unlearning the hatred.

Time finding myself.

Time finding this freedom,

which can teach others to love

themselves more.

This terrible isolation

sequestered much shame,

and pain for my ‘insanity.’

And now I wield this weapon

of love.

That I give myself.

That I give others.

I am the sun and I spread

my light in my little queer way.

As I blossom and sprout

with the golden warmth I’ve

gleaned from decades

of desolate gray,

I find the most loving

of people,

and embark on a lifetime

of art, creation, understanding,

and Knowing,

that there is no Right

way to speak,

to Right

way to Be.

I have found me.

Now is the beginning.



My strong arms that can move boulders

or the way I sway my hips

feeling my curves and

sexy fucking bubble butt!

I’m just me.

When I move through me as me, and find those moments of

Oneness with the music,

feeling the chords ripple through me

like a river

I feel the Oneness.

It’s just me and my body and the music

It’s the most beautiful thing in the world.

I really do feel it.

In the most cosmic way.