The Box is Wrong

 A little class inspiration can be recognized as the cause for this poem. As we've been discussing gender as performative/automated/essentially non-essential (if I can say that?ha), we seem to always fall back on the metaphor of being put into boxes or how our society likes to categorize everything. I know I have made my own boxes, for myself. I think we all do. I think the metaphor has to be pushed farther than just your typical boxes of man/woman, human/nature, black/white. Individually we all have our own ways of policing ourselves, we expand the boxes of man/woman in ways that feel most comfortable to us, even if we don't feel completely confident whether we are "acting" out our gender perfectly(whatever that means. I'm saying (much like Butler and Halberstam have said) what we do is who we are, who we are is not what we do. Sorry for the Yoda-ish way of wording things, but my point is we choose to keep ourselves in certain boxes by the way we act, the only way to free yourself from the boxes you don't like is to change the way you act.

I search every corner: trying to find myself.
But the box is wrong, this isn't me.
I need to feel free, but I'm trapped
in a panic, in a state of confusion.

Back and forth between corners,
but nothing feels right.
Nothing is Me.

The box is wrong, or maybe it's not.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the box is right
and I'm just not fitting to its shape.

I need to conform to the box,
or be lost forever inside this Hell of self-hate.
Become the box...before it's too late.
But it already is.

I know too much now.
I know the box is wrong.
I know I have to break free.

This box isn't me.
No box is.
I'm a person, not a thing.

I'm tired of this act,
and I'm ready to be me.
So many options to explore
outside of this box that's now empty.