Cruel April

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago and then got too busy to post it, but the sentiment still applies.

April, you're fucking terrifying.
Last week it was snowing.
How can I trust my bare skin to this air?
Do you even remember February?
How this landscape was a frozen cemetery?
How these trees were tombstones?
Now crocuses erupt from open graves
Past clumps of rotting leaves.
Too soon, April, and yet too late!

My mom bought a house when I was grown.
After years of apartments, trailers, basements,
Moving, always moving, she has settled down.
April, I walk through you like that house.
Nature has no memory,
Or these buds wouldn't be so bold, so tender.
When God sent a flood to cover the Earth
And destroy every living thing,
When the waters finally rolled back
And the land appeared, God sent a rainbow
As a promise.
No one thought to hold Him to this.

Once I went away all summer
And when I came home, my baby sister
Took one look at me and burst into tears.
I dropped onto one knee and held her
As she sobbed wordlessly in my arms,
Like, April, you hold me now.

WWJD?

A week and a half or so ago, I read about Leelah Alcorn (warning: link contains her birth name for no good reason), a teenage trans girl from Ohio who had just committed suicide. Just before she did so, she had posted a Tumblr note (which has since been deleted??!!) in which she explained that her parents' systematic denial of support in the name of Christianity had led her to conclude she would never be able to transition successfully or be happy. They told her "God doesn't make mistakes" and brought her to "conversion" therapy. They took away her access to technology and outside support. She was made to feel so isolated and alone that she could see no future for herself, no way out.

I only started coming out as trans to my family in the last couple of years, and I'm a grown adult with strong community supports and a number of tools for taking care of myself. Plenty of family members have been great, and some are vocal about their acceptance of and even pride in me. But I've also heard things similar to what Leelah described before taking her own life: that I am delusional, wrong, and couldn't possibly know who I am or what to do about it. This from those who claim to know what Jesus would do.

There are plenty of statistics out there showing that trans and gender-nonconforming people attempt suicide at alarming rates. Studies attribute these attempts to experiencing greater physical and sexual violence—including institutional violence and healthcare discrimination—and homelessness. This study also cites family rejection as a "minority stressor" (57% who reported family rejection had attempted suicide).

Whatever excuses we are using as a culture to not care for trans people, to treat them as less than human, we need to stop. Whether it's religion, medicine, psychology, politics—whatever we're hiding behind, it's killing people. In her final blog post, Leelah pleaded with us to "fix society," or she will not be able to rest in peace. So get your shit together, people, or Leelah Alcorn's ghost will be at your fucking door!

Poem to Fix Society

If I were to pray,
I would pray for plowshares
To spring up where you brandish swords.

I would pray for my siblings everywhere,
Told that they're sick and broken
Until they break themselves open.

I would pray for no more
Prayers as weapons.

I would pray for no more
Scapegoats, no more
Sacrificial lambs.

But I don't pray anymore.
The rebel cast out cannot commune.

"Jesus was a rebel," you used to say.
Who would Jesus damn?

Thanks.

I love acknowledging and expressing expressing gratitude. And I hate. HATE. the idea of going around the circle on Thanksgiving and everyone saying what they are thankful for. Because holidays, especially holidays that hang heavy with the legacy that this one does.

Tonight I am full of gratitude, and rage. It's really a strange combo. Rage at a country, a culture that devalues black lives, trans lives, poor lives, women's lives (the list goes on). Every day. Every damn day. And gratitude for my community, people close and far, family of origin and chosen, who work to end all forms of violence, who work with and take leadership from those most affected by that violence. I see you.

Then there are the ways you see and hold me personally that literally keep me going, that make the difference between me going out the door every day and ending up under a blanket in the corner of a room for a week. Which! Is fine! When it needs to happen! I'm just saying.

I'm thankful for my housemates who leave me notes in Spanish, or wishing me a good Thursday. My dad who reads my Queerest Post Ever and sends me a super relevant article. A Certain Someone who comes up with completely unnecessary excuses to see me (move the chicken coop, yeah right). Friends who scheme with me on projects and jam with me on songs. Siblings who miss me over the miles. People I've just met who quote gender theory and radical MLK at me and then drive around a cemetery with me after dark. And so much more.

Oh. And so thankful that no one I know in real life or Facebook or anywhere else has said anything about how people in Ferguson shouldn't riot or how Michael Brown was a criminal or how news reports of the grand jury's decision not to indict his killer interrupted their viewing of "Dancing with the Stars" because I don't know what I would have done, so help me.

17 of Something

Shit. Don't blow 
My cover, but I just 
Did that thing where 
I was thankful.

This is how good people are to me. Do I deserve this? Probably not.

That Time Locusts Ate My Bike, and Other Bible Stories

My mom just bought me a bike.

I am going to turn 39 before the year is out.

But she was never able to buy me a bike as a kid, and I mentioned to her I was looking at buying a bike but it seemed like a lot of money, and she said to buy it and she'd send me a check.

"Making up for lost time?" I quipped.

She quoted me the Bible.

Joel 2:25. "And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten."

She quotes the Bible to me a lot, and always has, and I'll admit sometimes it's tiresome, but something about this was sweet. That such an obscure-seeming scripture was at the ready, that she had this assurance that it was not too late to do for her very grown-up kid what she couldn't do when I was little, that broken hearts can be mended while they still beat.

That's what I got out of it, anyway. Well, that and a bike.

Poem for Cyclical Time (See What I Did There)

Time gives more chances,
More a circle than a line,
Cycles round again.

I kind of want a tiny license plate for it that says EAT MY DUST, LOCUSTS or something ridiculous.

Either/Or

This post comes from longtime reader, first-time contributor Hunter James.

I had dinner with my dad the other day. It was nice to see him and catch up since I haven’t seen him since Christmas. We discussed how school was going for me and he regaled me with updates on his health. He lost his job that day. He seemed pretty sad about it. He’s probably also worried and scared, but we didn't touch on those feelings. Typical evening for us.

However, as we were leaving, he said he had to use the bathroom - as did I - so I said, that’s a good idea. He went into the men’s room and I was left conflicted - follow my dad into the men’s room or use the women’s room. I chose neither. When he came out, he asked if I had gone and I replied that I was having a hard time reconciling bathrooms lately. He made some comment about public bathrooms, completely missing my point. I didn't reply. I couldn't find the words to explain to him my feelings and so didn't. Then when we were saying our goodbyes, he called me by my old name; called me his girl. Again, I remained silent. Walking away, I beat myself up for missing this opportunity for self-advocacy and promised myself that next time I’d have some words to say.

Haiku for transition

A ghost of myself
Trapped between realities
Who am I again?

Gratitude-Free Zone

I don't celebrate Thanksgiving, just like I don't celebrate Columbus Day. The story of the first Thanksgiving I was taught in school is a lie, the kind of lie that my Jewish friends were taught in Hebrew school as kids. A lie that is told to cover up genocide and land theft and erase the histories of entire peoples.

I am not thankful for this:

Or this:

I'm real happy that a lot of you have decided to take this day (or even this entire month) to remember to practice gratitude, and I like gratitude and think it's important.

But I just felt the need to carve out a little corner of the internet today in which to say, "No, thank you." Today is a day of mourning all those murders, rapes, mutilations, all that enslavement and lying and theft that happened and continues to happen in North America and Palestine and all over the world.

Also gonna mourn my grandma, who left this life on Thanksgiving a few years ago. She had a big mouth and an attitude and was one of my favorite people ever. Love you, Gram.

Call Me "Kiddo"

I bought my tickets! I'm flying to Minnesota at the end of the month to go on a road trip with my dad. We're driving to Montana with his girlfriend to see my little sisters, both of whom just had kids.

This post is in honor of the guy who has never batted an eye about anything I've ever told him. Except when I wouldn't eat my beets. That was pretty serious.

Haiku for 2,368 Miles

I was daddy's girl
Now I am my father's son
Some things never change

I am stoked to spend many hours confined in a hybrid car with this guy.

"We" "win" !! (??)

Sometimes there's so much to say that I spend days writing and rewriting. In the end, it comes down to the wise words of a friend (also a blogger) and 17 syllables.

Haiku for Equality

Acceptable queers 
were invisible or dead.
Great! Now add "married."

HBD to His Purple Highness

Haiku for June 7, 2013

Watching Purple Rain
Taught me how to be a man.
Happy birthday, Prince.

Also, thanks, Mom, for making Prince movies part of my upbringing. Little did you know...

move over, bro

Haiku for the Internet

new favorite blog
sorry, stories about prince
i'll always love you

In which our hero ponders the parent-appropriateness of this blog

My dad would totally not let me go to sleep last night. It was super cute. We were chatting on Facebook. (His mother's health is declining, and he has feelings.) I haven't shared this blog with him yet (or many people, really) because I don't want to censor myself. Rejection is real, people, and it hurts. But I'd like to think I am growing into taking more risks and being more vulnerable with those I care about.

Haiku for April 30, 2013

"Are you writing much?"
(Should I let my dad see this?)
"Just some short pieces."

Sunday bromance

Haiku for April 7, 2013

Montague Bookmill
Books you don't need, friends you do
Bro date, at long last

Facts of life

Today is my maternal grandmother's birthday. She would be 80-something today, I guess. She's been gone for a few years.

This is her and me a long time ago.