When I heard a gay club was held up,

I asked if the police had done it.

 

While I did not live through Stonewall,

police violence is always fresh in my mind.

 

When I heard that they-he had killed 49 people,

I remembered that the only larger shooting

was carried out by our government itself.

 

When I found out it was a lone gunman-

a "radicalized" young man with an abusive past,

I remembered being cornered, being told I was faking,

being forced to "debate" a lesbian's right to kiss.

It is never a lone gunman.

 

I saw so many people lining up to pray for them,

but never did they change their icons from a red cross,

never did they change their rhetoric on my right to love.

As if to love was not to live for so many.

 

I have fought back against the WBC,

I have bled for a rape victim's right to justice,

I have cried as I filed a form on my birthday,

just a child, that I was sexually harassed.

I have shaken in my therapist's office,

I have called out to my school's administration,

I have died inside a thousand times to hear myself rejected.

 

And yet I am so privileged.

Because I am still alive.

Being asexual has so far protected me,

not from the hate or the fear,

but at least from the outright violence.

 

I am tired of carrying names,

of a quilt that grows larger every year,

of the crucifixions of everyone

from Matthew Shepherd to Rae' Lynn Thomas,

of a world that tells us our love is fake,

our desires are predatory,

and our lives are not sacred.

 

We are still breathing,

but can we tomorrow?

 

At what point does intersectionality become a requirement?

At what point must we be upfront about our fears?

At what point is social violence a war crime?

 

We cannot sleep just yet,

because that Pulse is our own.

We are bleeding again,

just as we always have.

 

We don't want bandaids anymore.

We want to see the ugly stitches of the past exposed

while you help them to grow into scars with fading pain.

 

We don't want your prayers and sympathy,

we just want your help.