My favorite sun is the one during sunrise because it looks like it's on fire.
it reminds me of the viciousness of the world,
the power of space,
the power of space

My favorite sun is the one during sunrise because it doesn't burn
as much to look at
and it doesn't burn as much when I step outside
and I can drive without sunglasses on and breathe in the air and hold my coffee and look at that rising sun and I can feel
as small and insignificant as I need to
It feels good
I feel better
I burn my tongue on my coffee and spill some on my sleeve
it gets on my fingers but I don't rush to the sink's cold water
I stand and stare at the sun and feel it's heat
and it's like we're holding hands

My favorite sun used to be the one during sunset
but that one is death and the end and sunrise is
beginning and reincarnation and the comfort that
there is always a second chance
and I know of course that that is not the case, that is not true
but I let myself feel it anyway because it's warm

Warm like my bathtub, which I turn too hot and burrow in
and sunrise makes me want to curl under the bubbles and never come out
I do that sometimes
Shut my eyes
cover my ears so everything's quiet and dry there
and drop until my lips and nose are the only things above the water

I lay there for minutes and they feel like hours
and I hear the quiet drum of my heartbeat and breathe with it
and just like watching the sunrise I feel small
and it's good

Sometimes it's different and dark
and I cling to the sides of the tub and push and pin myself as far down as I can
I curl my toes until they cramp
and squeeze my eyes so tight bright lights flicker behind the lids
And try to escape the cold between my shoulder blades, knurled and knotted at the base of my neck
and just like watching the sunset I feel like I'm dying
and it's good

I listened to an old queer speak words of encouragement and wisdom last night
Their glasses slid down their nose,
their shoes were for comfort,
and they talked about their average, 9 to 5 job

But even so
as I leave their words shake in me
like the rattling of the old busses that speed
up and down the hills to my apartment
to my home
where the words follow me.

I bathe in them.

I light them like incense and inhale the smoke
I carve them like orange slices and **** their juices off my fingers -
   the closest I've gotten to *** with another person
   or at least the closest I've felt
Because with this I can breathe them in like oxygen
instead of pushing it out of my lungs and
out of my clothes and out of my mind.
In a way my asthma is cured.

I believe in these words.
I clutch them like my keys, like pepper spray
and they keep me safe just the same - maybe more
   (i still have trouble walking in the dark
    and i wonder if he does too
    if he ever did
    if his environment of 160 people fuels the same fear i have within thousands
    or if he feels as secure enough in his "passing" as he seems.
  
    i've never heard his voice.)

As I cried out in my mind
a man cried out an echo in his seat
and though we cried for different things it was the same
"Oh god oh god."

-

I wrote this on a bus three days ago
and now I don't even remember the words that had touched me so deeply
and I don't remember why that man was shouting
and I have heard my friend's voice and it was beautiful.
I think.
My memory is fuzzy.
I wonder if I even want help.

I find that I **** the emotions from things but
I absorb none of the words, the meaning
I read dense materials and listen to wise speakers and
I feel empty and clean and in touch with profoundness
But I leave realizing I learned, I gained
Nothing.
I am fooling myself.
I've always been an actor.

But now
I find I don't have to act. Not as much.
I have a few more scenes, a few more calls to make,
where I'll raise my pitch an octave or two so the adults think I'm polite
and then I'll drop the act until it's Christmas or the Fourth
and I'm surrounded once again by the boggy South and all its creatures
    (my relatives, to put it nicely)
the bigoted undertones to all they say swelling into great Alabama lakes.

I ride across their words, across their lakes, on tubes tied to boats
and like tubing I allow myself to be slung across it all
until I'm hurled around a too-tight turn.
I crash hard into their words until I'm drowning in them,
choking in them and wishing for air
before I'm bobbing back up again
Alive but bruised and breathless.

I climb right back on to do it again.
I don't know any other way.

-

I listened to that old queer encourage me to
"Get out of Georgia,
get out of the South"
just like every old queer before them
and every time I feel the urge to flee immediately.

I'm prone to suggestion, easily twisted,
I take after my mother in that way
A prime cut grade-A pushover
Malleable in the worst of ways,
And I fear that I've suggested my way into my own identity
That I'm so suggestible that just the words
"Transgender"
"Asexual"
Sculpted me into something I'm not
I worry that I'm pretending, that there's nothing queer about me
That I've literally been pushed into place by nothing.

I wonder then if that's the case
Why couldn't I have read the words
"Successful"
"Independent"
"Motivated"
and let them push me to do something, to be something.

If I had read those words enough,
maybe I'd be out of the South by now,
Instead of stuck here trying hard to remember what else that old queer said
so I can obey it instantly and without question

With spring comes
pollen blossoming in my lungs
flowers popping up from the ground
little girls blooming into young ladies
and I am told to love it.

In the spring I shed my scarves,
my coats, my sweaters, my jeans,
my t-shirts, boots, thick socks,
and I lie naked on my bed
curl to the side
and cough up yellow dust for days.

In the spring I shed my jeans, my boots
and shove on skirts, spaghetti straps, sandals,
long flowing dresses that twist around my toes,
which I paint cherry red and periwinkle
and bury in the grass and bugs and heat.

Butterflies come out in the spring
and stretch their wings and
breathe in sunlight and
sip nectar from flowers.

I come out in the spring
and stretch my creaky legs and
breathe in burning sunlight and
let my hair grow itchy and long,
and I try to say

I am the sun


With summer comes words like
thick, ripe, damp,
damp foreheads
thick ropes of sweat
ripe hot waves of skin cancer
and you wonder why I hate it.

In the summer I shed my skirts,
my sandals, my long tangled dresses,
I pile my hair on top of my head and
I pretend it does not burn red hot.

In the summer I shed my clothes, my skin
and bandage the raw tissue with
t-shirts and sneakers and ratty binders,
with sweaters that are too thick for the heat, and
I pretend it does not burn red hot.

Grass grows in the summer,
and turns green and lush,
and breathes in the air,
and sits and waits until it dies.

I shrink in the summer,
and turn bright red and peeling,
and choke on the air,
and sit and wait until
I can say

**** the sun,

I am a son.

I watch lord of the rings when I'm feeling
empty and masochistic
when I feel like butter
scraped over too much bread
not toast, but bread, with
butter cold and hard to spread
and I struggle until my bread is full of holes and
I can't hold myself together -
     I am the bread.

I watch lord of the rings when I want to be
distracted, reassured that in the end
it is only a passing thing, this shadow
and I cling to those words like my shadow clings to me
hoping one day I will truly believe them
but marathon after marathon
I am frodo only in burden, not in strength
I am aragorn only in fear, gimli only in stature, but
most of all I am faramir in the pyre
except I put myself there and
I don't know how to wake myself up even though
     I know the flames are coming.

So give me cream and I will
churn and churn and churn
and give me flames to toast my bread as dark as my shadows,
and I will scrape that butter on that bread until
     I can survive.

my body is not a temple
it is not some sacred holy place
    commanding respect
    and receiving as much.

it is not a sanctuary
    open and accepting and
warm for those who are welcomed
a quiet home for lost souls.

it is not a shield, or a cage
    or a home, or a journal
    or a dead language
    or a canvas.

my body is nothing,
    feels like nothing,
feels wrong and sad and unwelcoming -
my body is a shack
a wrecked interpretation of a house

my body is a shack in the cold
no heat to provide anyone who passes by
    empty and crooked,
    creaking in the wind,
leaky roof and broken windows,
a wrecked impression of a house
it asks for no visitors, and no visitors ask for it

and it sits, alone, not knowing the warmth of the temple,
    of the sanctuary, of the house
but sometimes it - my body - wonders, craves
not the desire of visitors, but the desire to desire,
a yearning to know a yearning,
    just some spark of familiarity
    just some hint of desire for company
    and the ability to change to the home it is told it can be inside
inside this wrecked imitation of a house.

it comes
when you're reading one of those books
written by pseudo intellectuals buried
in their despondent lookout on life

comes when
       They're writing on human's self-sabotaging nature,
when they're peeling
layers off and off, revealing the
truth of ourself like they're
       gods,
Hermes the messenger, or angels, Michael,
bringing to us thoughts we'd never have grown organically
     that's what they believe,
          what they tell themselves as they prune their feathers with pride
as they impregnate you with the god honest truth
and how did you live before knowing this?
it's been with you all along, kicking and breathing and pushing
     you just didn't know it, yet,
but now you can as
they preach their outlooks like it's a message that
changes everything, that your life will implode as your mind
wakes itself up -
     they try to baptize you
          gripping your throat with their
     carpel tunnel fingers, reading glasses
slipping down their noses as they lean over

you, watching their words pour into
you, their victims' throat, as they will it
and all the while they blame
you, because:

Humans make themselves miserable
     They write
They bury themselves in all they hate and
choose to burn all they love until
they're alone and self-loathing and scarred
unrecognizable
     They write
Of our hatred for humanity
for every single individual that surrounds us and
How we surround ourselves with them
with crowded supermarkets and lanes of traffic because
they fuel our suffering and
That's all we crave
     They write
On our thirst for blood
our lust for ****, ******, war on
How our society is fueled by violence and how
we bathe in it with a grin
stretched across dry  bleeding lips
sharp teeth that rip through our neighbors' flesh
with delight
     They write
that we're alone in suffering and surrounded by hate and
we're wild animals driven to war
out of boredom and
That's human nature in a nutshell
That's the truth revealed
          nasty, gritty, honest
     They write
and that's when

it comes, that gnawing in the
     pit of your stomach, that
scratching in the back of your mind
     that claws its way
          down into your throat where it
     *squeezes

the boy in front of me asked if the mushroom lasagna was any good
and the woman just shook her head no and said but the chicken was
so I got the chicken even though I wanted the lasagna
and it tasted like pink insulation with too much salt.

my friends and I recorded a song in a mobile studio last night
and the crowd of people around us danced and smiled and sang along
so we sang louder even though we knew we were bad
and discovered that morning that the CD they gave us at the end was blank.

my teacher asked me a question that I didn't know the answer to
and I turned to my neighbor and he whispered it in my ear
so I repeated it even though my throat was clenching up
and I choked back tears that I couldn't explain as I sunk farther into my seat.

my throat is dry just like that chicken and scratchy and sore
and when I speak my voice is low and rough like a blues singer
so I speak more often even though it burns and aches
and relish in the sound for as long as I can.