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