A Place Called No Homeland

amber says, lying is the work

of those who have been taught that their truths have no value.

reading that one line

makes me want to slide myself between the book’s covers,

cry myself to sleep.

i’ve always needed books,

the way some of my punk queer friends need cigarettes,

or weed, or clear packets of molly the size of a thumbnail.

a man told me once,

i’d like to wear heels in public,

but i’d also like to live

sometimes it’s important to be alive than to live

condemned her to live alone on the moon, forever circling

between the heaven she dreamed

of and the home she left behind.

and this is why the moon always seems so lonely, why

the touch of moonlight always feels like tears

someone told you when you were very young that you were a good

child because you were so quiet. and so you learned that silence

was something to admire, to look up at and aspire

to, like the moon – distant and unfathomable. you perfected silence. carved

it into yourself till it was miles deep. you dropped your words into this

chasm and watched them disappear. you could sit for hours, folding

your thoughts under your tongue, into themselves, over and over.

dear white gay men

sit down, shut up, and listen.

dear white gay men:

you are neither the face

of my oppression

nor the hands

of my salvation.

dear white gay men:

your cock

is not my revolution

your marriage rights

are not my problem

health care

is my problem.

colonization is my problem

racism is my problem.

transwoman-exclusionary shelters

are my problem.

trying not to get fucked over and raped

by you is my problem.

i think we gotta stop fetishizing survival we are all survivors

that’s why we all

bleed so much i used to think blood was so beautiful have to remember

we are more than scars

gotta stop fetishizing the dead

think we gotta stop fetishizing survival we are all survivors

that’s why we all

bleed so much i used to think blood was so beautiful have to remember

we are more than scars

gotta stop fetishizing the dead

you fought for the right to love freely

and i fought to be loved at all.

and all the stories – like smoke, like ghosts, like magic –

lost between us

and these rapeable bodies

we did not ask for.

today i wear a white dress

and silver earrings

in the rain

in memory, not just of you

but of me