#title i was a teenage caricature
#author mk zariel
#SORTauthors mk zariel;
#date 2025
#source [[https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/416-spring-2025/i-was-a-teenage-caricature]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2025-07-02
#notes Fifth Estate #416, Spring 2025

is the might of restraint closing in on me simply

a problem of synaesthesia? of this Autistic mind making life

hellish for its inhabitant—or is this unshakable weight

about statism? apparently the control industry &

gatekeepers well versed in verbal bandages

in therapy speak, conditioning into agony

are the ones to ask—am i the weird one?

.

it must be easy to call me the problem

troubled teen caricature, flickering in and out of

the public imagination—to upend all control must be

a dream of supposed insurgents at 1 a.m.

and you prescribe me deep breaths and sunlight

.

forced smiles, affirmations by google

but what if it was control that made us sick?

to be closed in, repressed, gendered by the suffocating—

do not simply recommend us artificial oxygen

but release your grip,

and let our trans bodies breathe.

mk zariel (it/its) is a transmasculine poet, theater artist, movement journalist, & insurrectionary anarchist. it is fueled by folk-punk, Emma Goldman, and existential dread. it can be found online at <strong>linktr.ee/mkzariel</strong>, creating conflictually queer-anarchicspaces, and being mildly feral in the great lakes region. it is kinda gay, ngl.