my father tells me to be quieter as i’m washing the dishes
so he can hear the news,
hear about the 102 people shot in orlando last weekend
and the candlelight vigil i didn’t attend because i had to work

i go back to my room and try not to cry
do i even have the right to cry?
it wasn’t me, wasn’t my family,
wasn’t my friends, my lover
shot last sunday

it wasn’t my club, my neighborhood
my town, wasn’t even my state,
in fact i live almost as far away as you can get
without leaving the country

but it was my community
i didn’t know these people,
hadn’t even known their names
but we were connected by virtue of being different
in this specific way
in that who we love isn’t conventional
and the way we identify isn’t conventional
we thought we were finally getting somewhere
we were celebrating
it’s our month to be proud!

not dead.

i just want us to stop dying
LGB teens are 4 times more likely to attempt to kill themselves
and over half of young trans people have considered suicide
in 2014 18.6% of hate crimes were committed because of sexual orientation
in 2015 a record number of trans people were murdered, most of them young trans women of color

in 2016 a man walked into a gay bar on latin night and opened fire
102 people felt a bullet enter their body and 39 of them never felt anything ever again
within minutes, hours, days, 10 more lives were stolen
10 more college graduations, wedding nights
10 more first children
10 more families blown apart
49 people will never take their child to school
will never be in their best friend’s wedding party
will never move into a tiny apartment with the love of their life and eat pizza on the floor
49 people will never see a day when we aren’t dying anymore
because they are dead

in 2016 on a sunday morning police walked into a gay bar and said
“if you’re still alive, raise your hand”
39 people did not raise their hands.

original tumblr post + recording: punkfairie(.)tumblr(.)com/tagged/mattie.doc