all the voices

tonight all the voices sound the same and the need is great.  greater than we have to offer.  greater, each night, like a snowball.  not just the metaphor, but an actual snowball.  picture it: tiny speck rolling across the lawn.  picking up more and more and more of itself until it is too big to lift.  until this is the space it anchors to and becomes something else.  a man.

is that what shelter is?   the gathering up of self.  the picking up of other people, other energies, other stories and traumas and urgent struggle for basic need?  is it the rolling until you can't roll one more inch? is this the spot where you get stuck, where you become?


but back to the voices and the way they roll into each other.  mel, mel, mel, melmelmelmelmelmel.  give me a bed upstairs.  move me to the top of the list.  i'm not like the others.  move me.  move me.  move.  me.

everything is blocked.  is overflowing.  is only going to get: more stuck.

Your Head in Your Hands

you talk at me through long strands of black hair.  your bangs, long.  hands, long.  arms, long.  fingers: impossibly long.  everything about you is long and lean and delicate.

yet, you are: so strong.  you are the very definition of reed (which is ironic since that is where you long to be, buried in books and discourse)

look at you, long black reed.  look at you bending over yourself, talking to me through your hands, talking into your knees.  talking about the one who says mean things just to tear you down.  look at you popping back up and pulling your slender fingers through the curtain of your hair to peek back out at me. i'm still here.  i'm still listening and nodding and asking you more questions.

i am still.  sharing the space.

learning about slave-to-owner.  learning about all you want validated.  learning about all that you think that you are.  you say that was me at 14, finding words that i didn't know existed that described exactly what i had been feeling for so long: gender dysphoria; slave; trans.


i am still here.  trying to find words i didn't know existed to sum up my own way.  of being.

the power to render poisoned water potable

hey mel, wanna see something that will make you puke rainbows?

why yes.  yes i do want to see something that will make me puke rainbows.  double rainbows!  but whatever it is can't be as awesome as what she just said, as that crooked grin or her perfectly timed introduction and delayed explanation.  a brilliant build-up.

she dutifully displays the purple and pink fuzzy unicorn with the golden belt and big blue eyes.  then tromps away to the next target.


i think maybe she is the unicorn.


i think that pink suits her (as much as black suits her) as much as all the people surrounding her, right now in this room, suit her.  and how many years did it take to find them?  how many days does she have to hold her breath as she walks out into the binary world where the masses don't see her. don't believe she exists.

ogres at every turn, waiting, to silence her magic and erase all her colors.   she is brighter than the shadows they cast.  she is older than their hate.


she will make the water potable

all the names

i have a hard time naming things: anxiety, fear, sadness.  rest.less.ness

none of them are quite right.  none of them explain the why and the where.  none of the words i can think of describe the me i am being.

when i can't sleep it is a fire in my veins.  a loud buzz in my head.  the din of too many voices, too many songs, too many croutons in my soup.  i think of you.  i think of your arms and my arms.  the warmth of your leg over my leg.  the way we fit, so perfectly.  the way i try to empty my cave, calm the echoes.  the way i want you to do it for me.  show me how again?  the way i don't want to wake you up with my storm.


you are watching me and naming things for us:  kaylee.  water.  tomatoes and sauce.  heartbeat.  footsteps.

together.

the way of the crab

there is a click of the heart, so subtle, that can trick you into almost anything.


i walked into your world a puppy.  wanting to be where you were being.  eager to please.  unabashedly jumping in circles around your moving feet.

and now, even if i tried, i couldn't find my way out.

the click, the latch, the trap door shut.

what it means to say i'm sorry

it was a wednesday.

it was a wednesday and before i could change my mind i hit send and then everything changed.  only nothing changed.

i was still me

i was still left with myself--only i didn't have you to remind me i was still me.  i didn't have the you i wanted to discuss it all with, didn't have the you that would shake your head and say i did it wrong or that it was okay or that i really should have called instead.  i didn't have you to tell me i was a hero or a coward or a piece of shit hypocrite.  i didn't have.


today there is space.  a hole that i don't even try to fill.  space to be every me.

picture a street with a manhole cover.  now picture the space that hole takes up, it is big enough to swallow one whole man. or not.

now look inside that hole and see the gulf of stars on the other side.  a constellation of possibilities.  a (w)hole lot of black.  a johnny cash song about when the night wind wails:


nobody knows. . .nobody sees. . .nobody knows. . .  


but me