If You Loved Me

If you loved me, you wouldn’t use that word

If you loved me, I think I would feel it more

If you loved me, you would have heard

If you loved me, I wouldn’t run for the door

                Every time you start that rhetoric again.

If you loved me, you’d compliment all parts of me

If you loved me, I think I’d be able to just be

                But I am missing whole parts of myself and then,

If you loved me…

You think you do, you think you’ve accepted

Everything that I’ve become, every smile I smile.

But you’ve been left out, your lives projected

On what mine has blossomed to over the miles.

If you loved me, you’d do more than say it. I would feel it.

                The jokes, the votes, the slurs,

                The smiles when I put on makeup

                “You’re progressing” and “It was just a phase”

But can’t you see?

This is me.

If you loved-

If you just loved the person I really am, not just “That daughter I bore and have responsibility to.”

I am not your daughter.

                I am Shane. 

                I am genderqueer. 

                I am pansexual. 

                I am polyamorous. 

                I am happy.

I want to love you, but you love only parts of me.

I cannot hold on to societal imprinting much longer, so

If you love me, love all of me or none of me.