One Word: A Poem

For so long I hid myself behind a veil.
A label. One word: Awkward.



I thought my body was awkward.
I wore pants in the summer
because I secretly thought that my thighs
were fatter than they were
and I hid this feeling behind the lies:
“My legs don’t get hot”
“I’m used to it. I have to wear pants
for field work.” My hips.
The fat that sits upon the bones.
It gives a girl that curvaceous appeal.
I despised the curves that sat there, but let
them be their awkward selves.



My face always looked
so masculine to me. “You
look so much like your dad!”
“The female twin to your brother”
Yes, I know. The female version.
My endless prayers to God to wake
as a boy when I was young never
were answered. I dealt with it. I was
stuck, born to be the female
double to my older brother.



I thought my personality was awkward.
Can I rephrase that? It is awkward. BUT
that does not define me, but I have let it become
me. I don’t know how to talk to people. It’s because
I’m awkward. I started college and made some friends
but I find it hard to make them on my own terms.
It’s because I’m awkward. To me, I was just that
AWKWARD kid. But I am more than that. What
I mislabeled as “awkward” are my insecurities,
fears, and lack of self-esteem and confidence.



There’s a young boy who I always saw
staring back at me. My reflection told me more
about the boy hidden behind “Awkward”. He hid
behind the pole of a word like a child might when
trying to find the perfect place for hide
and go seek. Of course I could see him
behind the pole, behind the title, but I
let him think I didn’t. I let him believe
he was a master at the game until he really was
and I lost sight of him as the pole grew in width
and suddenly he and I combined in the only manner
I knew how, we showed ourself to the world as the
awkward girl, she was kind and caring but something
was never quite right about her.



A new label. Because society loves
them so much. One word:
Transgender. Me.
Female to male. I’ve always wished
so dearly to have been born a boy.
I thought it impossible to see myself
as anything but that awkward girl and I
fooled myself into thinking I was okay with
what I was born as. Until one day in college
I looked in the mirror and felt all the confidence
that everyone should naturally feel. Make-up
gave me the shadow of what I could be as a man
until I had to unwrap the ace bandage from my breasts
and wash the façade off of my skin and become
the awkward girl again.



Transgender. This one word
gives me that confidence back.
The hair on my legs grow and I feel
progressively comfortable in shorts.
One day my hips will no longer bother
me with the fat that lays upon them. My face
has always been my own. I look like my dad
and my brother, I look masculine, and that’s my
comfort spot. Becoming myself. The fear to talk
to strangers fades. “I like your hair!” some guy
tells me, riding past on his bike. I could respond
without nerves. I could respond as myself.



I do not believe that I am broken, I am not
sick in the head or confused. This is not a rebellious
phase. This is just me. So, I say this:
Friends, I am still and will always be the same
person you met. I’m still the same person you decided
was cool enough or kind enough to befriend.
Family, I am still the same person you watched grow
up. You are not losing a child, grandchild,
sibling, or what have you. I am not going
anywhere. If anything, I am becoming more
present than ever. I will always be your child. I will always
be your grandchild. I will always be your
sibling. I will always be me.



For those of you who might not agree with
my decision to follow and become myself,
I respect your opinion and bid you adieu and wish
you the happiest of lives if you decide to no longer
be a part of my journey. For those of you who
support my decision and wish to come along
for the ride as I grow into the man I have always
been: I thank you, I love you, and you all mean the world
to me. No words can express my appreciation
for each and every one of you.



I used to say: “my life is a submarine”
and on days when I was feeling particularly
down, I would end the line with “and we’re all
sinking”. Now the submarine is afloat, so climb
aboard this journey with me. Let me introduce myself,
this is Captain Hayden Reid Fulfer speaking. Please
buckle your seat belts. This is going to be a very
bumpy ride. But the journey is worth it.
“My life is a submarine” and the fish that
surround me are beautiful and glorious creatures,
the water around me is so fresh and we may all
be sinking, but now we’re sinking with a purpose,
to explore, an adventure. Because coming out
of my submarine is nerve wrecking as hell, but
I am glad to have the grime scrubbed off my
sides and such a supportive crew.

A Letter from Your Son

You’ll never find a boy

If you don’t grow your hair out.

No, mom, I’ll never find a boy

if I let it grow. The boy’s inside me,

has been, screaming, wailing to be

released, to be me. You torture him

with expectations, dresses and frills

not realizing he’s your son.

We support you, they say.

Support and understanding

are two different ideas,

you’ve mixed them up.

I’m afraid.

Be yourself there’s no one

else to be. Slow down,

girl, you’re rushing.

How do you rush becoming

yourself when you’ve waited

twenty years?

I finally met him.

Shook his hand and said hello,

he’s polite, funny, kind, loving,

passionate, he’s me. 

Crash

Because baby, a relationship is a two way street

and we fucking collided

texting and driving we smashed

our hearts, shattered our windshields

with the insults we threw at one another.

We lost ourselves in the rain

and couldn't pull the sun out to guide

us again. The map lay torn at our feet,

a destination that won't be reached by the wheels

of our Love.

"Baby, let's go on an adventure"

you said. "Let's climb mountains" I suggested.

And we did. But you soon grew tired and achy.

I was left to carry you, limp, down the mountain

and into the valley of our insecurites. You soon

decided you were fat, not pretty enough, I

soon decided I wasn't doing enough, everything

that exited my lips was another rock thrown at our

lives. The sun came out to tell us

the flowers growing between our

feet were black and rotten, you saw

it and let go, I let go too.

You suffered from amnesia.

"No, that's not what I said" you screamed,

"That never happened." I was left on a not-so-

merry-go-round in my head, nauseous and unsure.

"you ruin everything", "you always play the victim"

Your words flew through my head and I knew

there was nothing to salvage from this love.

But one flower still grew between us,

a yellow tulip stained with the red

lipstick you used to leave on my rosy

cheeks. I saw hope in the petals of Spring

and looked at your lips to read a promise,

but maybe I misread. "I'll always be here"

instead of "It just hurts too God damn much".

We lie on the pavement under shattered

glass of the windshields of our perspectives.

I lie writhing, paint from a stary sunset

and a lone mason jar of hopes leaking

into my broken self-image. You

lie amongst your packed boxes, ridding

yourself of the memory of us. You've

already called yourself a taxi to anywhere

that I'm not. "There's no good in goodbye".

My First "Love"

She drained my energy, I was a slave

to her, the human counterpart 

to her relationship with Facebook,

Vine and Soda Crush. I made up for the fact

that the screen in her hands could not fold

laundry or satisfy her sex addiction. I slipped 

away from her grubby palms, and she grabs

the air for me, tugging at the threads connected

to my heart beat. "I know you better than you

know yourself," she whispers. "We're soul mates,

being with me is inevitable." I sit up, sweat

dripping down my back, trying to catch

my breath and tear myself back to my bed,

the quilt I lay underneath. I beg her to move

on. Her ears are taped shut, a political statement

she claims. Her claw-less fingers rake at my skin

and implants her own cells. My body repulses,

shakes and seizes. My hands are black 

from the metal of the bars that contain me.

Short Poems

Webs of Fear

We are always afraid of something,

Our parents catching us in the cookie jar,

Teachers collecting the homework we never touched.

Hurting ourselves doing that one thing we were told not to,

Getting caught in the bedroom of our girlfriend by her father.

Pregnancy at a young age.

That midterm, the final.

Death.

And spiders.

Especially spiders.

Inevitable

Maybe you cried at birth

because you knew that from

that second onward you would spend

the rest of your life growing up.

Flowers and a Love poem

She throws a plate at your head,

ducking, it soars past your shoulder.

You hated its floral print anyway.

Picking up the phone

you order Chinese food for two.

5lbs 3oz, 1ft 6in

We measure babies

like we measure the fish

we catch because we all swim

in the same ocean of life.

But most importantly,

we all grow up shitting ourselves.

C.K. Fulfer

The Shadow War

I tiptoed down the three stairs to the sliding, wooden door to my dad’s bedroom. The house was dark and quiet and to my knowledge, my whole family was asleep. I stepped down onto the small platform that separated the three steps from the kitchen to my dad’s room and the endless steps down to the basement where my older brother TJ and older sister Carrie slept.

2003, I was 8 years old and more terrified of the monsters I believed to live under my bed than the fact that my country just went to war with Iraq for the terrorist acts on the trade centers two years previous.

            I heard my name in a hushed tone down at the bottom of the stairs. “Go back to your bed,” TJ said.

            Without a word I climbed back up the three steps to the kitchen and I waited. At the age of seven I felt like I waited for an hour in the kitchen before attempting to enter my father’s room again. As I waited I couldn’t keep still. I looked around the dark area, my eyes had adjusted by now and I could see the shape of the kitchen. The shine of a streetlight through the small window above the kitchen sink let in a minimal amount of light and it felt like a spotlight of a stage. I felt vulnerable; as if I could be seen all too clearly by the monsters and ghosts I feared the most, it felt as if they were all waiting to pounce on me. I knew that once I made it to the safety of my dad’s room and crawled under the covers of his bed that I would be safe. If his presence would not keep the monsters away, his snoring surely would.

            I descended the steps to the platform once more and all was quiet this time. I drew open the wooden door slowly, making sure to make as little sound as possible. I opened it just enough so that I could slip through and closed it as quietly as I had opened it. My father’s snoring filled the room and I let out a breath of relief. I was finally safe from all of the monsters and other creatures that lived in the rest of the house, and especially from the ones that lived in my room. I circled around the bed to the other side and slid under the covers. My dad’s skin was warm and I snuggled up close to him and let his snores lull me to sleep.

My father led me to my bedroom by my hand, gently. He was speaking but I don’t remember what he was saying. Maybe I was wrapped up in another daydream, thinking about my stuffed animals and wishing they were real so at night I would know I wasn’t alone in my room with the monsters under my bed and the ghost outside my window that scratched at the glass in an attempt to come in. Or maybe I was listening as much as I could to my dad, but I had gotten lost in the comfort that his voice provided that what he was actually saying meant nothing to me. Perhaps I was simply tired, and his words blew past me like the wind outside my window.

Pulling back the comforter and sheets, he lifted me up into my bed, even though I could have easily climbed onto the white sheets myself. In his left hand he held the most magical book, the pages were lined with gold and the red and cream cover had the picture of brown teddy bear on it. Though I know there was more to the cover, I cannot remember the name or what other characters from the stories the book held might have accompanied the bear. I called across to my brother; he loved when our father read from the story book as much as I did.

“Hurry!” My voice squeaked with excitement.

I sat cross-legged on my bed and Nick ran from his room into mine. He wore a giant black NASCAR shirt that he had received from our dad, who had an endless amount of the shirts. Nick joined me on my bed, crossing his legs like mine, his legs boney and pale.

Our father opened the book and asked us what he should read. Nick and I might have argued over which of our favorites that our dad should read that night, or maybe we agreed that he should read The Velveteen Rabbit again. The boy in the story had gotten very sick and it was ordered by the doctors that all his toys should be burned, including the velveteen rabbit. The rabbit in the story reflected on all the memories with the boy and after producing a real tear, he became a live rabbit. Our father flipped to the story, and all too quickly story time came to an end. An end where the rabbit watched the boy the next summer and the boy seemed to recognize his old friend. He closed the book and looked at us, our eyes bright, yearning for more.

“Time for bed,” He said, lifting himself from the edge of my bed.

We groaned in response. Just one more, we begged in unison. My father shook his head and probably said something about us needing our sleep to grow properly. Nick hopped off my bed and hugged our father before saying goodnight and leaving the room. My father tucked me into bed and kissed me on the forehead, said goodnight and approached the doorway. He turned off my light and looked back at me with a smile.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you too dad,” I replied. And maybe I had added a question, something about the monsters under my bed as the fear crept under my skin in my father’s coming departure. Or maybe I ignored the idea completely, trying to fool myself enough to sleep before the fear overtook all of my thoughts. A small night light lit up part of my room with its soft golden glow, and the light from the bathroom leaked into my room from the hall to illuminate a good portion of my room as well. Laying my head down on my pillow, I might have fallen asleep easily that night, or maybe it was a night where my eyes darted from corner to corner of my small room, waiting for any sign of danger.

At some point I lifted myself out of my bed and hopped off of my bed, careful to jump far enough from the bed so that no monster would be able to grab my ankle and pull me under. Again, I tiptoed out of my room and through the living room and kitchen before reaching the three steps down to my father’s bedroom door. I stepped down and quietly opened the door. Upon entering the room I noticed an extra shape in the bed with my father, and quietly I sighed. Lori was over. I’m not sure I really comprehended who Lori was to my father at the time, or why they slept in the same bed some nights. I just knew that the nights that she was over, I could not sleep with my dad, that his snores could not be my shield from the monsters on those nights.

I slid out of the room and up the three stairs, my heart pounding as I walked through the dark house and back to my room. I entered the living room and noticed a dark shape on each of the two couches, Lori had brought her kids. One of our three cats bolted past me and I jumped, eyes darting back and forth, waiting for an ambush. Once I had calmed down a bit, I took a deep breath and gathered the courage to enter the battlefield that was my room. I ran into my room and quickly hopped up into my bed, a smile on my face. I had outsmarted the monsters again in my jump, for none of them could have grabbed me because I was much too fast for them.

The ghost scratched my window from outside and I held one of my many stuffed animals to my chest. “Be ready soldiers,” I whispered. “Tonight the monsters are on the offense, and the ghost is getting closer and closer to scratching his way through the glass.” I expressed my need of defense to the limp and voiceless, bead-filled toys. They were tough, I convinced myself, they would protect me from any ambush while I slept. Though, deep down I knew that they could not help me, and that was why most nights I left my bunker and joined my father in his monster-free zone. I had to cross no man’s land in order to get to the protective area, but I knew that I was speedy and clever enough to time my movements just right so that the monsters wouldn’t know I was gone until I was already asleep and hidden by my father’s snores.

Tonight I was on my own though, and it wasn’t the first night that it had happened. This woman who went by the name of Lori had invaded my routine, she had taken over the military base against the creatures that crept around at night and had caused me to fight them off on my own. Little did I know that the nights would become more frequent, and my advancement in ranks would quickly scale up from Private to Lieutenant General. My father would always be the General of our household, but it didn’t seem as if my other siblings tried to fight against darkness that slid out of the shadows when the lights shut off. So I was left to defend the entire house by myself, orders cut off from base by the slumbering shape of Lori next to the General.

I hated the night shift, I just wished to sleep, but my eyes couldn’t stop looking at the shadows around my room. The enemy side could attack at any moment. Holding a ceremony, I gave my companions higher ranks and left them with my night shift post.

“Teddy, Tiger, and Cheddar,” I said to three of them. “You’re in charge tonight, make sure to check under the bed every few minutes, I’m counting on you.”

I saluted the stuffed bear, tiger and mouse and crawled under the covers, closing my eyes. I slept lightly, waking to the slightest of noises, but in time I got used to it. I got used to waking up on Saturday mornings to find Sam and Megan, Lori’s children, staring at Nick and I while we slept. They woke up much earlier than I did, and I didn’t know how to feel about the two. Their invasion to our home was much like the invasion of the creatures that lived under my bed. I had not noticed the effect their entrance into our home would have on me for a long time, never did it cross my mind that in order to defeat the monsters that lived under my bed, I would have to move my bed entirely, to create a new base in another home.

C.K. Fulfer 

A Chemical Suicide

Trembling, he sits and waits for the news.

His mother called during a Chemistry

test, his favorite class.

“Tyler,” she said,

“I need you, come home.”

He never heard such sorrow

Soaked into her voice

Like water to an overwrought sponge.

It leaked from her, dripped

from every word and froze

on the back of his neck

while he ran two blocks home

his backpack left on the back of a chair.

He sat in the Emergency Room

listening to the mix of beeps from separate

heart monitors and the shuffling of feet

across the symmetrical white tile.

He found it hard to breathe

in the sterility of what they claimed

to be Oxygen in the large waiting room.

He didn’t have asthma but the way he took

each breath could have fooled the best of doctors.

A drowning man’s dying breath

couldn’t compare to the oxygen he lacked,

couldn’t compare to the battle his lungs

fought to keep working properly.

He desperately looked around

For a single air bubble to breathe in,

A sliver of hope that could possibly save a life.

A lone high-shrilled beep

and it was all done.

White lab coat walking over,

the sterility of his hands

Like the bleached bones of Death.

Apologies, meaningless words

said over and over to hundreds

of thousands daily. He stared

at his own hands that still twitched

with the answers to his chemistry test.

Hands that had only known a world

Of education now squeezing

Each other tighter and tighter

As if the pin-pricks of heated discomfort                      

could bring his mother back to him.