My tailbone hurts today.
Keeping my spine straight
feels difficult.
A line that doesn't finish.
But the queue leads
straight to a
gay **** house —
they just call it policy now.
------------------------------------------------------------------
You salivate over our features and our form.
You want us in your fantasies,
in your private dark.
You know one of us.
You love one of us.
You have not said so
where it would cost you anything.
------------------------------------------------------------------
We were poets.
Performers.
Passionate lovers.
Prostitutes.
There was texture.
Rhythm.
Spirit.
The British came
and made us criminal.
The fundamentalists came
and made us shameful.
The right wing came
and made us a question
with only one permitted answer.
Each time,
the same baton.
Each time,
the same hands reaching for it.
------------------------------------------------------------------
They have always come for us first.
We are the rehearsal.
We know how the second act begins.
------------------------------------------------------------------
I believed I was lesser.
I fought it anyway —
thundered voice,
sharpened walk,
used every inch of my frame
to stand taller than my shadow.
Now my tailbone hurts.
Now the spine that held me upright
through every law that
said I shouldn't exist
is settling the debt
in inflammation and bone.
The body keeps the score
when the scorekeeper
has been declared
illegal.
Still here.
Hurting.
Spine
—
Mar 27
Mar 27, 2026 at 10:55 AM UTC
My tailbone hurts today.
Keeping my spine straight
feels difficult.
A line that doesn't finish.
But the queue leads
straight to a
gay **** house —
they just call it policy now.
------------------------------------------------------------------
You salivate over our features and our form.
You want us in your fantasies,
in your private dark.
You know one of us.
You love one of us.
You have not said so
where it would cost you anything.
------------------------------------------------------------------
We were poets.
Performers.
Passionate lovers.
Prostitutes.
There was texture.
Rhythm.
Spirit.
The British came
and made us criminal.
The fundamentalists came
and made us shameful.
The right wing came
and made us a question
with only one permitted answer.
Each time,
the same baton.
Each time,
the same hands reaching for it.
------------------------------------------------------------------
They have always come for us first.
We are the rehearsal.
We know how the second act begins.
------------------------------------------------------------------
I believed I was lesser.
I fought it anyway —
thundered voice,
sharpened walk,
used every inch of my frame
to stand taller than my shadow.
Now my tailbone hurts.
Now the spine that held me upright
through every law that
said I shouldn't exist
is settling the debt
in inflammation and bone.
The body keeps the score
when the scorekeeper
has been declared
illegal.
Still here.
Hurting.
Spine
—
This poem sits at the intersection of body and statute, where identity is not debated but administered. Across histories shaped by empire, religion, and nationalist politics, queer existence has been repeatedly recoded: from culture to crime, from presence to problem.
