1.
I flew into LA
At sunrise:
Clipped wings,
Pockets of nickels.

2.
I could have died
With my heart exposed
And lips silent
(It would have been easier).

3.
My repressed homosexual tendencies
Got me into your veins.
I can’t taste coffee any more,
Even if I drink it off your smile.

4.
Yes, my mind did go there.
My stomach knots when
I realize I want your hands
Hovering in the darkness.

5.
He doesn’t watch me at night
When your name is fleeting
And my heart throbs too fast.
This could have been ours.

6.
I don’t think women
Look as good in blue, with
LAPD adorning their heaving *******.
The gunshot still rings in my eyes.

7.
I wish it were zombies.
Let’s start over from here,
And you can wade my shallow puddle
To begin our end over again.

8.
They’re like us, but older
And younger, and blonder, and
More human than I could ever
Pretend to be.

9.
Goodnight.
It is empty in the abyss
That is the absence of
Your smile.

No one wrote a book
On how to queer up the world.
I’ve been waiting for Volume One
On how to hate your body effectively,
Because all of the brats who spit in my
Cherry eyes won’t tell me what I’m doing wrong
When I say “it doesn’t fit.
It never fits. Will I ever fit?”

Because we’re one binary and the other, and we don’t
Fit quite between, and we’re doomed to be melting
Snowflakes in schoolyards. We’re doomed to tears,
And standing awkwardly between ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ sections.
They opened up their doors to us, those who fit
Comfortably or not so comfortably in either of the two
Slots (like maybe this is a gameshow, and I didn’t pick
The right door?) but they promptly
Threw us out when we tried. And tried again.
And failed and cried and threw our hands in the air like
Children, misguided, in pain, stubbing our toes on the door
That says “real suffering.”

Because our suffering isn’t real to a world that encapsulates it in
So many words as symptoms for a
Common cold.

Soak up your tears
With glitter glue
And craft yourself together
A brand new, well-patched heart.
Use lots of layers, so
The sword of society
Cannot pierce your
Mismatched organs.

You’re not yet twenty-one and
Alcohol doesn’t sit well on your smooch-swollen lips.

When you hold his hand too tight
Your fingers gets sweaty from palm-to-palm contact.

It makes you think of the fact you are 75% water,
Or maybe 60%, and how your eyes burn in front of the computer screen.

You’re not yet twenty-one and
The doctor says you’re anorexic (you had fast food for breakfast).

White sage burns your fingers black.
The full moon pulls salt water from turquoise and home towns.

Maybe you’ll never see the beach again,
Or run in the water with childhood, clothes sticking to your thighs.

You’re not yet twenty-one and
Every day you consider giving up the race to it.

I don’t know how to rob a family
   of their daughter;
A peptobismol princess they bruised and stained.
   How do you erase an entire sister?
Where do sleepovers, makeovers, do-overs go?
   When the pronouns shift,
And the T seeps in, where will I tell them
   I hid their girl?
Blood is thicker than water in peeling families,
   But when the ransom doesn’t come,
How do I introduce a family
   To their son?

Is this how God feels?
People pray to me when I am at my lowest, beg
For the ability to make it through a day that I have not
Yet made it through, and God (like me) can
Fulfill the purpose of a stand-in.

Is this how God feels?
When people call upon his (or her) (or zir)
Name in times of crisis, like when a bullet is pointed
Right between their eyes and they have one name to call out
To save them from an eternity ******.

Is this how God feels?
Fetishized and cried out in the dead of night,
Someone’s always yelling his name in ecstasy,
Or in pain, or in fear, or in joy, and it seems like poets
Drop him like a bomb, like a ritual, stark naked in their stanzas.

Thank you for considering me
Part of the human species, someone
Who you might help up if they fell in the
Sidewalk (but only if they weren’t in your way).

You invoke my name like I’m a God but only
In your favor, when you need proof that you
Have the social capacity to stand someone different,
The ability to bestow upon me the honor of being “the queer friend.”

When I bite back I don’t draw blood, not like
You draw blood when you tell me I should try harder to
Look the part of the person that you saw on an hour documentary
That you refuse to admit pales in comparison to a lifetime.

Even when your burn is first degree you nurse
The chemicals in it, and by Monday I am laid out to dry
With all the other “queer friends” that didn’t make the cut,
Didn’t shut the **** up so you could grant your grace on

The gruesome instances that are my existence.