Great Acorns from Little Oaks, Shall Grow live in a strange world, a world beyond the wildest imagination of that poor frightened child I once was; peeking out the door late at night before summoning the courage to walk around the block. So many poor frightened little things, male girls seeking to become women ... not knowing how. So many wanting some simpleton of a white knight to feeble-mindedly choose them to rescue over so many more comely non-operative women. He would likely be feebleminded too, and by that not be a man a woman would desire. Not that we are not agreeable people, gentle, often with tender hearted natures contained within our male bodies. We are indeed! But we are not that damsel in distress sought by the few noble, courageous, and a bit demented white knights. We can not bear their children and, without surgical modification, we can only partially fulfill their romantic passion. Perhaps a black knight, wise in the ways of the world, might find us handsome; but would he see into our woman's heart or simply view us as an erotic chimera? How soon we lose the dream, brought up short by grim reality. The dream dissolves! No more than a puff of smoke from our first cigarette! From this we learn fast, perchance faster than the comely lass held captive in the dragon's tower. We learn through pain and repetition what tarnished knights want from women ... and what do we withhold? We withhold nothing, not even our immortal souls. In return ... naught, less than naught, our breasts ache with the loneliness. Do we drink to drive away the pain? Take drugs to deaden the senses, escaping momentarily from self-flagellation? Do we offer intimacy to every passing stranger, hoping beyond hope to meet a miracle? We do, some, too many! In our youth, madly running back and forth, knowing time is short, we believe in everyone ... except ourselves. Nothing, no one, no living creature is ever at fault, save we. We do it all! We are everything! We dare not allow mistakes! We play by every rule! Surely the world shall make room and let us in! Won't it? Does it? Perhaps, in some little corner where, in ignoble silence, we disappear. For a time, even that's enough. Eventually, chaffing at confinement, we struggle to be free, to find our way, to achieve some pretense of life from what seems a desert of despair. A desert where our aspirations are contained within barbed saguaro, spiny cacti, waiting to stab us even if realized. So vibrant in our youth, so fragile, vulnerable. Frightened to buy a dress without prior blessing! Urine running down our leg puddles 'round our feet! We beg the jungle for approval, and tremble with gratitude before any who would throw us the smallest crumb of human kindness. How long it takes us to realize the weak are butchered by the strong; to survive we must join the screaming, clawing multitudes. Power must infuse our limbs, our hearts, our souls and we must stride with head held high, more powerful than ever we dared to be, then ever we needed to be, as mere men. And then, and then, we are no longer what we dreamed of being. No longer ethereal flowers waiting to be plucked! Reaching out we take the world in our grasp, more man, perhaps, than ever we could have been by any other means. Our fantasy lies shattered deep within, where it well ought to be, and yet we yearn for what we might have been. The long-suffering lover, dazzling when disrobed in sunlight, breathtakingly naked in moonlight, an awesome paramour, and more, a nurturing mother, nourishing her consort and her children, beckoning both, inviting all, to suckle at her breast. Who, with heart so arrogant, desires not to be deciphered, each of us a coded lock without a key? Not I, certainly! Will I offer up my vitality, my energy, my human spirit? Yes! Resoundingly! But there is a lost piece of me, a lost fantasy, that doesn't want to be forgotten, that doesn't want to die! It is a feminine domestic remnant that needs be evoked, at least a little, while yet there's time. True for me, and true, I think, for each beating male/girl heart. Come then, poets one and all, embrace and lend us comfort now, for beyond this life there is naught but oblivion. ldl