Kai Cheng Thom

there are no words in your mouth
but there’s a pen in your head
you want to tell the truth
but you told stories instead

stood with its bare feet in the dirt wish-whispering at the moon, make me precious. make me lovely. make me unlonely. make me a star. like Gollum, like Ginsberg, like gratitude, like grace.

listened to the echoes of the howling of the wolves and wish-whispered to the moon, “make me dangerous. make me strong. make me untouchable. make me whole.”

today i wear a white dress

and silver earrings

in the rain

in memory, not just of you

but of me

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

lost between us

and these rapeable bodies

we did not ask for.

you fought for the right to love freely

and i fought to be loved at all.

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

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

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.

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.