Sins of Being Seen

Dedication

For every soul who lived loud, soft, scared, or fierce; for every name they tried to erase; for every body that dared to breathe when the world called it sin. This is for you. We are still here. We are still rising.

Sins of Being Seen

I was not born a crime, but they treat me like one. Every breath I take outside my own walls feels like trespassing, like daring fate to notice. There are names carved into the pavement, the air, the headlines no one reads anymore—bodies traded for silence, for shrugs, for statistics. I am not special. I am not safe. I am seen, and that has always been enough to make me guilty. Enough to make me next.

Some days, my reflection blurs into rain-streaked windows and fading ghosts. I press my hand to the glass and wonder how many have stood where I stand, breathing quietly, begging the world to look away before it remembers we exist. The rain erases footprints but not memory. Not the sin of showing up in a body the world said should not have been born. The world sees my face and still calls me liar. They see my truth and call it delusion. They see my existence and call it threat.

You sentenced me before you knew my name. Before I learned how to write it down in my own handwriting, not yours. You wrote laws with my silence, verses with my shame, entire religions around the idea that I am wrong. You made me your warning sign and then demanded I smile through it. Every murder, every disappearance, every whispered prayer not to be next feels like standing trial again for the crime of becoming. Of becoming more than what they wanted me to be. Of being man enough to tear off the mask you glued to my skin.

You watched me crawl out of my cocoon and called it rebellion. Called it sin. But what you were really afraid of was how beautiful I looked in my truth. How undeniable. How human. You were afraid I would name myself before you could bury me. You were afraid I would become someone your children might admire. That I would show them another way to be free.

I came out quietly, not with fire but with fatigue. Not with fists raised, but with trembling hands carrying my own name like a fragile heirloom. I wasn’t looking to be brave. I was looking to survive. But you twisted that too—called it courage, then resented me for needing it. You wanted me broken or invisible. You never asked for honesty. You never knew what to do with it.

I remember the first time I told someone, and they laughed like I had made a joke too big to take seriously. I remember the sting that followed, not because they didn’t understand, but because they didn’t try. I remember sitting on the edge of my bed with a binder so tight I saw stars, trying to shape myself into something palatable. I remember the first time I heard someone say my real name and I almost cried in the middle of a grocery store.

I remember my first safe space—a community center with chipped paint and unmatched chairs—where I didn’t have to explain myself, where nobody stared when I spoke. I remember how sacred that felt. I remember how dangerous it felt to leave.

There’s a weight to staying alive that no anthem prepares you for. Some of us were never meant to be inspiration posters or broken headlines. Some of us just wanted to live. To buy groceries. To laugh. To love and be left alone. But the world doesn't like quiet revolutions. It demands our pain on display—and then punishes us for daring to bleed. It turns our murders into case numbers. Our eulogies into misgendered slurs. Our memories into shameful whispers at dinner tables.

I am not your sin to bear. I am not your shame to hide. I am not your cautionary tale whispered across pulpits, classrooms, and courtrooms. I cannot save the world from what it refuses to name. I can only survive it. I can only try to breathe without apologizing for it. I can only wake up and keep walking even when my shadow drips fear and history with every step.

I remember the first time I was followed. Not with footsteps but with eyes. I remember the silence that stretched too long in a waiting room, the double take at the pharmacy, the misgendering on paperwork I had already corrected three times. These are not tragedies, but they are a thousand paper cuts. They bleed slower. They stain deeper. They teach you to brace for violence in everyday moments: the walk home, the restroom mirror, the voice you clear in a room full of strangers.

Is this the real life, or just another sentence waiting to be carried out against me? I didn’t kill who I was supposed to be. I buried what you forced me to carry. I stopped pretending to be the fiction I was handed, and became the truth I carved with my own hands.

You look at me and call it confusion. I look at me and call it resurrection. Every scar is a syllable in a language you refuse to learn. Every breath is a hymn I sing in defiance of erasure. I am not perfect, not polished, not palatable. I am still a man. I am still enough.

They tell us we are brave for breathing. For walking to the mailbox. For going outside. They call it resilience. They call it strength. They forget that all we ever asked for was to exist without being lessons or legends. We were not born to be martyrs. We were born to be men, women, neither, or both, whatever the mirror finally stopped lying about. We were born to be human.

I am not here to inspire you. I am here because I refused to disappear.

And we are still here.

Still breathing. Still bleeding. Still seen.

Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. Because being seen should never have been a sin.

Written in grief. Offered in truth. — S.L. James