Melancholy in my coffee
Subdues my day
Dresses me in drab
Lifeless clothing
The smile I wore yesterday
Left hanging in the closet
Slightly wrinkled
Sends me out the door
Under the grey sky
My vision clouded
My mind numbed
Even your warm skin
I kiss goodbye
Can't make the sun shine today
Tomorrow, I think, I'll take
My coffee black

I remember that day in 7th grade
Back when you were still calling yourself Cassie
You were standing reserved and afraid
In gym class clad in shorts and words carved in your skin
That was the day I began to notice you

3 years later and we're best friends
Not much has changed except that you go by Nate now,
I still mess up pronouns sometimes,
Your body tells the tale of a war going on for years,
In that time
We've become a little bit wiser,
Hopefully a tad bit happier,
And your cuts go a little bit deeper

we're alive too
too alive to die
and we're in love all the time and my sister says life is a movie
and every movie has a love story
and life is about love

which is why I
will starve my ribs to Adam
will return to dust
will Eve your lips, the darkest hue of moon I've ever met
insomniac hips guide constellations to lucid dreaming
constant smoking and distraction
we gather in sheds and houses

in shreds the ways we forgive and forget
and weigh decisions, the weight of responsibility nagging at my shoulders
ripples of anxiety
curdle in my throat
it is Thursday
i let an infant pull my hair
i rub your sick back

I miss my blood/ my brother
detained
by four walls of injustice
know
one
knows
the
truth

but I
believe you
and now your family
in various states of uncertainty
holds the threads of stories that you weave
stolen money and crimes against humanity
repossessed cars
bottles of liquor
sisters in law
above the law
held up by the law
interrupted
interpreted
and moment we spent was precious,
we laughed and were normal again
the satellites in yr eyes
who knows what they've seen
what they choose to believe
their is such madness in our blood
it runs
thick and rampant
galloping in our genes
and we
live for a living
you alive even when you dying all the time
swollen tears/dynamite boot you/hungover father/ surprise maker of cigarettes and smashed porcelain
born again/seventh day sinner/ come clean out the water/ baptized coffee
working class hands hung the rhythm of the drum in my chest
the tornado of my soul

too big
energy contained not mine anyway
for you i would unlearn so many consonants
i would forget to speak in sentences
for you make moonly gestures
move me to guessing in 14 degrees with ward of the state AWOL passenger seat
spill yr worries sister
we are not alone tonight

you are so much of my blood when i forget what we are made of
we come from the same stardust
however toxic

I bet you never got to know
That I wasn't always depressed
I was always narcoleptic

Every time I told you I didn't feel good and couldn't see you
I wasn't depressed
I was narcoleptic

That message in March
Where you said you even loved when I was so depressed I couldn't get out of bed
I was narcoleptic

I couldn't help it
People never understand, it's like how you feel when you've been up for days
I was narcoleptic

I could sleep 12 hours
And not feel refreshed, because my sleep doesn't heal me, like it heals you and others
I was narcoleptic

I know I took those stimulants
But they made me edgy and nervous, and I turned into a ****, so I didn't take them but
I was narcoleptic

You see, those stimulants, Vyvanse
Made me feel like I'd been up for days but running on 2 pots of coffee because
I was narcoleptic

A man who has been up for days
Is not often the most polite and I hated being impolite so I stopped taking them but
I was narcoleptic

So I spent my days sleeping
Sleeping till noon, then needing to sleep at 3 PM, until 10 at night and then until noon because
I was narcoleptic

Your stepdad said he wouldn't stand for that "crap"
But I couldn't help it, I wanted to see you more than anything and I knew it hurt you but
I was narcoleptic

Not only am I narcoleptic
I think I have fibromyalgia just like my grandmother, who loves you too, I think,
I have fibromyalgia.

Today I'm still narcoleptic with fibromyalgia
But I've found a cure, a mix of two pills, one for the narcolepsy and one for the pain
One pill is designed for nothing but narcolepsy (not ADHD) and the other a narcotic for the pain
You'd have no idea how much better I feel than I did before
You'd have no idea because you don't care to learn who I am
Because I'm not who I was, I'm refreshed, something new, I'm normal for once
Not just feeling bad, not just tired and sore and fatigued, not so depressed I can't get out of bed

Just narcolepsy and fibromyalgia.

Someone asked me the other day
"Do you like her?"
I thought for a second and smiled,
"Yes, yes I do."

"God, you're such a lesbian!"
I smiled and replied with,
"I know."
And kept on walking.

Later in the day
People were staring at me
And
Calling me names.

I held my head up
High
And smiled.

Nobody will stand in my way.

If you’re gonna
Die in the apocalypse
Drop out of school
Dump yourself into that little
Ditch you made that was stemmed from
Decades of anxiety and
Depression
You might as well look good doing it.
If your mascara runs in the eternal
Race to your dripping baby chin
It might as well be mixed with the glitziest
Eyeshadow you can afford
(Mine is hand-me-down from my mom,
Who has been called a drag queen too many times
For her to count but somehow
That makes me, her little genderless clown,
Feel connected in some cosmic way
To her ****** again).
Save your pennies so you can
Splurge at the thrift store on
Sweaters that go down to your knees to hide
Vaginas and ****, bits
That maybe you wanna be coy about today,
So all the people spitting in your eye can at least
Trip on your pronouns and your triumphant
*******
Can scrape the heavens.
You’re allowed to buy that tie, I mean
Easing the pain in your wrists and your heart and your stomach
Is done best in floral print,
In pop culture t-shirts,
In femme/butch/femme/hard/soft
**** culture, *** tantrums,
If you’re gonna get called by the wrong ******* name all day
At least look your best when you resist the urge
To send fists sailing into their face.
And it’s not just us but anyone,
If you’re ******* angry that someone keeps commenting on the size of your
Thighs the lush of your
Lips and some ******* keeps
Trailing you on his bike
Shake your studded gloved fist at him and tell him
THIS IS NOT FOR YOU, LORD OF THE *****,
LORD OF THE NORM, I PICKED THESE
FIVE DOLLAR SHOES FROM THE RACK OF GOOD WILL,
SHONE THEM UP LIKE I SHINE MYSELF
FOR MYSELF
WITH MYSELF
I AM MYSELF.

this is for the queer kids
who are taught their ABC's
but not their L's, G's, B's and T's
for the Russian government and the I.O.C
who deny Russian queers their visibility
to the people who call me "******"
i wear your name-calling like a pink triangle
stitched to my sleeve
for the Harvey Milk's, the Christine Burns'
and every queer in between
to the allies who do more than say
"your sexuality is okay with me"
for the Jamaican trans* teen
who was murdered needlessly
to the television networks
who portray LGBT individuals positively
for the radical queers
the POC queers
the genderqueers
the queers who have felt excluded
this is for you
for us
this is a celebration
and an ultimatum
we are here
we are queer
& we will do more
than survive.

By the time I smoked down to the filter, I’d re-written my suicide note.
30th revision!
It’s my magnum opus.
Been working on it since I was ten.
Eleven? I didn’t believe in god.
They called me a heathen.
At twelve, even.
They called me queer.
They weren’t wrong.
But that didn’t make them right.

Why would you ask me if I'm okay
Don't I look like I'm okay
And stop calling me Jacqueline
I’m not Jacqueline anymore
No, I was never Jacqueline,
But I didn’t realize that when I was younger
And who do I ask about my gender
Don’t tell me God
I have spent so long praying
There are depressions in the floorboards from where my knees collided with faith
But I don’t think I have faith anymore
God doesn’t answer my prayers anymore
Why doesn’t god answer my prayers?
I know for a fact God answers my friends’ prayers
why doesn’t He answer mine
I think it’s because He doesn’t love his queer children
I think God needs to go to a PFLAG meeting
Or at least one needs to be held in a church so He can hear the words of acceptance echoing throughout his house
Mom told me they didn’t know if I was a boy or a girl until I was born
But I still don’t know
Let’s do an ultrasound on the part of my brain that decided not to feel like a girl
I must have decided
But I don’t remember doing it
I told my friend I didn’t feel like a girl,
She laughed and said, “I know, you feel like a woman.”
I told my friend I didn’t feel like a girl, and she said, “Not so loud, I don’t want my parents to hear.”
And she was right, because at some point “gender” became a dirtier word than ***
Because even though her parents won’t admit it, they wouldn’t kick her out if she was having ***, as long as it wasn’t with someone of the same ***
And I’m in a same *** relationship with God
Because in religion class they told me He was genderless
But we still call God “He”
People still call me she
But I’ve never told them different
They said we’re all created in God’s image,
But I think I’m not
Because God doesn’t make mistakes.
No, I’m not okay
And stop calling me Jacqueline.