I sit in the buckle of the bible belt

Fighting to merely exist

As white men in stiff suits

With smiles that never reach their eyes

Sit in a room in DC

Dressing up prejudice and calling it politics

 

I feel like a shadow filling a frame

In a world that doesn’t value what we’ve feminized

My body demands everything but respect

And it doesn’t matter what I say

Or what the scars on my arm scream

Because although my body has become a battleground

War is still the only language men seem to understand

 

How is it that Jesus seems to have pilgrimaged to DC

When my identity is not dictated by my faith?

And if we insist on playing identity politics,

Can I please have a politik that supports my identity?

 

How do we not see transitioning as a holy act?

Honoring each trans resurrection

After a societal persecution

And their own three days of hellfire?

 

God said, no weapon formed against you shall prosper

Then why must I fight an army of ignorance 

Each time I leave my front door?

 

But I continue to fight

I fight for those who aren’t famous but faceless

For Marsha’s body, lying at the bottom of the Hudson

Happy Birthday, Marsha

I fight, because like my country,

My body has been colonized

 

To combat it

I practice my responsibly-packaged

Granola sponsored mindfulness

And wonder if I can ever make the world understand 

 

I sit, I write, I think

Pain pulses through my pen and drenches the page

Comfort,

in those four lines

 

When we learn to acclimate  over assimilate

When we pull the colonialism out of the gay agenda

When we no longer rely on the anesthetics of sleep and drink

When we embrace wholeness that extends beyond ourselves

 

We will be free