Nestled around your shoulders is freedom – [ a flag, an emblem ] [ a keffiyeh, a patch jacket ] a smile spreading birdlike across your face.
a short, freckled arm punches the air. this girl
taught me how to make a fist, among other things. we knelt in the bathrooms
arms tight-knit, sister stitches and with startling delicacy
prepped ourselves for a fight. never forget this started as a riot, we remind ourselves.
this woman’s voice is louder and braver than i have ever heard it
and so therefore mine is too, emboldened, singing fierce against the pulsing dawn.
bodies make constellations around me. i know and love the fact that us transsexuals,
more than anyone else, were born of stardust. it’s in our steps, our creation. I love to self-mythologise.
& they say if you’re writing a poem to focus on the little things so i won’t write
about how twenty kids on embassy floors can be louder than the rattle of their cage
but i’ll talk about how your palms are still stained with blackberry juice
a warrior in a garden fighting men who cultivate war blood under their polished nails
and my knuckles still bruise white against the scars i have from childhood
so when a pig moves to barrier us we move cuff over cuff in a promise of tomorrow.
we know that despite the night the sun will rise and burst like a broken hose
over our eyes. we raise a hand to cover them, but when our words
suspend themselves in our mouths — broken teeth caught on the bottom lip of a new city —
we know what we are fighting for
and in the slow lifting of our hands is freedom.