Coffee Stained.

“Control yourself.” 

Bells rung outside, the church’s procession beginning amidst the graveyard, 

“Myself? What about all of you? You said you loved me. You promised.” 

“Of course I love you! You believe your own mother and father don’t love you? You’re nothing but selfish! We love you; we do not love this ‘problem-child’ you’re choosing to be.” 

“You love an idealised version!” His hand struck out and caught the cup on the table, smashing the coffee against the wall. 

His father’s eyes flickered with anger, but Martin’s had already begun to burn, 

“You are my daughter. You are your father’s daughter. You are our-” Her lips stayed parted, shaping around the ghost of words as Martin interrupted with a newfound spirit, 

“I love myself. I love who I am, but I do not like who I am around you. You make me hate myself, you know that don’t you? You enjoy it. You enjoy me being small –” 

“Mary - I want you to have children. I always wanted a little girl.” The slip up had been accidental, but it lay on the floor in front of him anyway, “Granddaughter -” 

“You don’t see me as a girl – because I’m not. The image has been ruined Ma. Let it be broken, you’re only going to cut yourself trying to pick up the pieces.” 

This struck his father, like a slap around the face, 

“Mary. You know your mother and I hate when you speak in riddles. You may as well speak in tongues.” 

“Pa - I love both of you. But it is not selfish to love myself more. I deserve to be who I am. Not who you’ve decided I should be. I am, I’m not your daughter. But you’re starting to make me doubt I’m your son either.” 

His voice bounced around the kitchen, hitting against the cabinets, the lines along the wall marking his younger heights, the small handprints on the framed paper above the stove. It echoed his childhood, 

And it clung, clung to the walls so desperately, he had to cut it off. 

“I don’t think I should live here anymore. I love you and I want to stay, but I want to feel reassured that you love me too. I want to have a reason to stay other than fear of hate – because that hate that is meant to be in the real world – it is meant to be outside, but instead, it’s in here.” He waved his hands about himself, fitting together pieces his parents couldn’t see. 

“Darling, please, you mean none of that. Mary, you will stay here, and you will go up to your room and sleep this off. When you are ready to have a proper conversation – one without all this silly ‘I am a boy’ nonsense, then we will speak.” 

Martin took a step forwards, towards his parents, his mother took a step back and his father cast his eyes to the side. The cord was severed. He felt the string between them go slack and it pulled a piece of his heart out with it. 

The piece sat on the ground between them, among the dripping coffee and the lies. It would be theirs forever. 

He pushed out his chest, raised his eyes and stared at his father, waiting for him to join in, waiting for him to mock Martin for taking that step, for trying to reach out. For not giving up first. 

“Mary-” His father began, but that was all he needed to hear. It was all his father needed to hear too. 

It seem with the sound of his own voice, mimicking those two syllables repeated since Martin’s birth, he had extinguished something within himself. 

“I’m scared, that I’m going to leave, and you’re not even going to try to call me back. Maybe you’ll stand on that porch, looking out to the garden and wait – but you’ll tell everyone at church I’m on a holiday, or work experience or something that doesn’t scream ‘that boy, he has the devil in him.’. You are going to lie. And the only person you will be hurting is yourselves. That is what I am scared of."

He finished with a breathe of defeat 

“Someday, you’ll look around this house, and realise you’re completely alone. You’ll have each other, of course you will - you have for nearly your whole life. But you can’t have Mary and you’re about to lose Martin.” 

He tried to break it down, pretending they didn’t already understand everything, pretending they weren’t the adults in this situation. 

It hurt less if he believed the lies of the online forums 

‘They just don’t understand. This is after their time.'

“Oh for God’s sake Mary! Damn it! Why can’t you just be-” 

“What?! Holy? Righteous? That is your birth right, not mine." He spat his sin out at his parents, "I am disgusting and my limbs are twisted, you are Adam and Eve, and I am the serpent. But how is it my fault I am made of scales, you were the ones who named me, and I don’t want this name anymore. I am not something to sneer at, I am your son.” 

“You make no sense!” 

“You choose to not understand!” That was the final blow, his father’s ego joined the smashed ceramic on the walls, and his mother’s love buried deeper inside her, hidden from him.

Unseeable. 

Walking away would have been the calm, sensible thing to do, it would have been rational and adult-like. 

But he was seventeen and he was burning with the strain of holding himself and everyone else together. 

“God will forgive those who fall, not those who jump.” His mother uttered. 

The entire pot joined the cup, coffee spread out on the floor, stained the walls and ceiling, splattered and burned all three of them. Martin’s hand was red and began to blister.

But running it under the tap would mean it wouldn’t scar. And he wanted to remember this moment every time he wanted to come back to this household. 

“I hope you hold my memory close. Enjoy your Mary."