"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" My eyes left my book, the words of Shakespeare jumping off the page. The boy who said them looked almost smug; that was irking. 

"I'd be more impressed if you could recite more than just than just that." He leaned back against the park bench. 

"Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines and often is his gold complexion dimm'd." He looked into my eyes and I looked away from his.

"I'm still not impressed." Just because he knew the damn thing didn't mean that I was willing to forgive him. 

"That part is fitting for today." The heat was scalding and I had stolen one of the only benches that was covered in shade. The shade was the only relief from the blistering temperature. Summer's were indeed fragile.

These nights were short and the days stretched on forever... soon enough the summer will fade, trees will shed leaves like tears in preparation for the brutal winter.

"Yeah and everything does lose it's beauty. But what was beautiful about this you destroyed, it didn't fade." He stood when I did. He knew it was my favorite but he never showed much interest. 

"But thy eternal summer shall not..."

"Stop it." He made his decision when he blindsided me last fall. We were his summer and unlike the sonnet... our story will not live on. The sonnet is beautiful and everything that I wished I could compare life to at times. He was ruining that. 

This sonnet was love at first read, something about it pulled me in and created my love for Shakespeare, increased my love for stories and drew me into theater.

He took a dorky little theater kid with some anti-social issues and exploited her for the sake of a story. He used me to further himself and then tossed me aside. 

I should be flattered that I supposedly inspired him; I wasn't. He used my personal life and issues in his story and then made money off of it. He didn't tell me, ask me or warn me.

The story came out last fall and the only thing i felt while reading it was rage. He didn't know what it was like to have any kind of mental issues and he used me for that. He told me he loved me, he slept with me, he acted like he cared. As soon as it was published; he was gone. Moved on. 

So he better not come spewing this bullshit about how beautiful I am, comparing me to a sonnet, comparing me to the summer. He had no right. 

"I was wrong last fall. Last summer was the best summer of my life. Being with you was... and now like this sonnet, a part of you will live on for as long as someone is reading that story. I should have told you but I didn't set out to hurt you. I saw you in that library and was drawn to you."  

Drawn to my clumsy nature and awkward self? To my lack of knowledge of the real world and innocence? To my crazy? Is that what he picked up on? 

"Well you made your choice." My book was placed in my bag and unlike last fall... I was the one to walk away.

"Thou art more lovely and more temperate. The summer is just starting and i'm not giving up." He would eventually. 

But he didn't.

So I may have missed the mark but i wanted to modernize this in a different way... and i had a good time writing it! 

From the very beginning I knew it would be difficult but I never knew just how bad it could be. 

Little boys would play with cars and trucks while I was content spending time playing Barbies and dress up with my little sister. My parents never judged me or put a label on me; I was the one to do it myself. They let me be exactly who I was yet it wasn't a surprise when I came to them the summer after high school confessing that God made a mistake.

In their eyes, God didn't make mistakes. 

They also believed that if God didn't want us to have the medications for birth control and gender transformation... we wouldn't. To them if we had it, it was to be used. I was privileged to grow up in an upper class home so when I told them I was sure that I was really Patricia and not Patrick; they started treatments.

From the start I knew it would be hard, but I didn't realize how hard. For the first two painful years my body changed slowly yet before my very eyes. After two years I was transitioning well but the bullying never stopped. In college I would be safer; I was wrong.

Every day I was an abomination. Because to them I was a man and I would sport black eyes and bruises. Because my gender choice and hormone therapy didn't matter to them; I was useless... a freak show. 

That's why I decided to transfer schools and coasts to get a fresh start. My breasts started growing, my hair was long and I had become a magician with the make up. Eventually I would get the surgery and my transition would be complete but until then... I just had to be careful about what I wore.

Transferring school's was supposed to be a fresh start but it became the worst decision of my life. Things went great for about six months but that was until my roommate discovered my secret and within a week it felt like everyone knew. The staring probably was light but it felt as if everyone knew. I felt like every time I passed someone they saw me and instantly thought 'That's really a dude.' 

Obviously college is a large place and it wasn't as if everyone bullied me, but it was High School all over again and the right people noticed. Upstanding students who had their own lives to live never paid me any attention; it was the ones who were just there to be there, the ones who partied and did drugs, the ones who made it their mission to make me as miserable as their lives were.

In my third year of school I was studying to be a lawyer. Little boys and girls dreamed of being vets, firemen, cops and actresses; my dream was always Law. That was until one night, until that event that caused the law to fail me so deeply that I lost all passion for it. There was so much that night stole from me.

If I was a woman that means I could be raped like one too. A disgusting thought that escaped booze stained lips. The worst part? I wasn't even at a party, I wasn't drinking, I bothered no one. In sweat pants and a pink jacket I had my hair tossed up and was walking back to my dorm from the Library; grades were my pride. 

You know when they say 'she was asking for it' as an excuse? That's not real, that's not even remotely reasonable. Head to toe, I was covered. But it didn't stop them from using that against me in that courtroom after their words, my story; being re-raped verbally time and time again.

So what if I still had a fucking penis; Being a straight Transgender woman... I wanted it right? Because all girls want it, they all ask for sex from people they don't even know. We're all whores and sluts. We all flaunt ourselves for men because we couldn't possibly have brains. 

That day they stole my identity, my dignity and my view of the world. They showed me what it was really like to be a woman. They pulled my pants down because obviously I was wearing baggy sweat pants to be more easily assaulted; Tight jeans would have been too easy. 

If I was born a man and didn't want it, I could have just said no or pushed them away. It didn't matter that four homophobic men held me down and stuck their disgusting dicks in the only hole I had for them to do it... while one more stood guard. 

Because I should have been able to stop it, it's my fault... it wasn't rape.

Bloodied, unconscious, bruised; torn apart. 

The disgusting man who thought he could be a girl wasn't helped, but photographed unconscious by multiple students; laughed at for it.

But it wasn't rape and Justice didn't exist. 

I was kicking and screaming, trying to just get away from it all but had nowhere to run now. Experience had taught me what would happen next, it was only a matter of time. Yet I couldn't bring myself to give in. For my entire life I had always given in but now it felt like I had something to fight for; I fought like hell. In the end it was no use, I couldn't stop what happened no matter how hard I tried.  

Screams echoed against my plain walls when I woke up struggling and trapped by my blankets; the only sound I've made since that night in the Ally. The single worst event of my life that I was forced to relive it not just every single night in my dreams, but almost every waking moment.

There was no escaping it; I felt like I was thrown in ocean during hurricane season. My body was just being thrown around while I tried to break the surface again and I was slowly losing my will to fight. I wasn't sure if I wanted to fight anymore. They took all the fight in me I had left in that hospital room.

No, I'm not being one of those dramatic people who say a bad hair day or grade was this horrible event in my life and it's the equivalent of dying slowly.This was so much more. With every breath I wish I just died that night, then I wouldn't be forced to live like this. 

I had long ago been broken; ruined. They stole everything except the breaths I took... leaving me to continue dying inside and damning me to relive the torture my parents threw me into to be forgotten. 

I write this poem as an ode:

To the weights on my ankles

Keeping me down

To the whispers in my head

Clouding my thoughts

To the tape over my mouth

Concealing my voice

To the chains on my hands

Keeping them lowered

To the tears in my eyes

Blurring my vision

To the pain in my legs

Assisting my fall

To the blisters on my feet

Making me limp

To all that you've done,

I forgive you.

I’d like to think there are two sides to situations, so once more I declare as an ode:

To the weights on my ankles

Keeping me steady

To the whispers in my head

Strengthening my integrity

To the tape over my mouth

Allowing me to listen

To the chains on my hands

Keeping me calm

To the tears in my eyes

Letting me feel

To the pain in my legs

Building my muscle

To the blisters on my feet

Roughening me up

To the all the scars on my body

For accepting life's hardships

To all the love around me

For giving my life meaning

To all that you've done,

I thank you.