Stone Butch Blues

Especially in the cool night
when leafy boughs make patterns on the walls
and consciousness gently ebbs
making way for sleep to lap my shores
in that long moment of no control
coals of remembering glow softly
lending the darkness a different hue.

During the long night I realized that if love had been enough, I might never have lost Theresa. But I did. I could say we came to a fork in the road. That was the truth, but it wasn’t the whole truth. I knew I had lost Theresa in little ways long before we parted. I had been at the center of her world; she had become my whole world. As my universe shrank, I needed her to be everything for me, and in return I longed to be everything she needed. Neither of us could live up to the expectations.

As yellow as leaves give way
to the gentle insistence of the green
you touched my loneliness
and my crisp, brown husks
yielded to a tender newness.

Since I had no words to bring the woman I loved so much, I gave her all my tenderness.

After the bar closed we’d walk down the street, pretty tipsy, one of us on each of Jacqueline’s arms. She’d throw her head up to the heavens and say, “Thank you, God, for these two good-looking butches.” Al and I would lean forward and wink at each other and we’d all laugh for the sheer joy of being who we were, and being it together.

I need to go home to you tonight, Theresa. I can’t. So I’m writing you this letter

“I feel like a ghost, Edna. Like I’ve been buried alive. As far as the world’s concerned, I was born the day I began to pass. I have no past, no loved ones, no memories, no me. No one really sees me or speaks to me or touches me.”

For the moment her arms protected me from my own life.

Her touch felt so good that tears welled up in my eyes and spilled down my cheeks.

of a sudden, everything got real quiet. The cash registers stopped ringing and nobody moved. Everybody was staring at the jewelry department. There’s this couple—a he-she and a femme. All they were doing was looking at rings, you know?” Angie sat back and exhaled slowly. “Everyone was glaring at them. The pressure just popped those two women out the door like corks. I wanted to run out after them and beg them to take me