x papery godfolk x

Hard Times

still has all that tape on it 

from where you reattached 

the cover

our senior year of high school.

we were sitting on one of those 

brutal, slatted benches

in the lobby 

& the paper cover of 

[ what would become ]

my favorite book 

tore off 

from its time spent in my crowded 

backpack. immediately,

I started crying–

but you were so calm, 

so forgiving. you jumped 

into action; you ran 

into the school library

[ behind us ] 

& asked the mean old librarian 

for some scotch tape.

you fixed it. because that’s who you were,

once upon a time.

you were the boy who fixed all my problems,

even the ones that didn’t make sense,

even the ones you didn’t know about.

& then, a decade later, my unread copy of 

Cemetery 

Boys split down the seams, its spine

fracturing like bone. 

I asked you if you could look at it–

if you could fix it

–and you told me to leave it on the table

for you to get to when 

you had the chance. 

the day I left, you still hadn’t found the chance.

We still hadn’t fixed us. 

a kid, really—was

stabbed to death

just the other day.

the government still tells us this is only.

“possibly” a hate crime.

& I ask you, any of you,

how is it possible to stab another

human being

forty fucking times

and not have it be about hate?

whenever I read her name,

I am scared for my trans siblings,

for all the people like me. I am scared of a world

that would rip away our dignity

until an act like this becomes less about

unconscionable hate

& more about what is normal,

what is accepted.

is this what you want from us?

will nothing appease you

but our bloody, gruesome

murders?

I am sorry

for this girl whose last moments knew nothing

but pain.

I am sorry for those that will come after her—

because I am sure she isn’t the last.

I am sorry for the ones who loved her

& those who once loved her & those

who might have loved her.

I am sorry, mostly,

that the world wasn’t one of them.

about you 

or talk about you 

or even think about you. 

i feel so empty 

and somehow

i think that’s because you’re not here. 

or because i’m not there. 

i think all that emptiness 

is just the place where you used to be.

and what do you do when 

there’s no going back 

and even if there was

you would still make the same damn choice 

every time? 

i grew up lonely and unremembered.

& the thing about kids like me is that 

we’ve always known everything there is to know about 

the ugliness 

needed to make it out alive.

a friend of mine

doing flips in all directions

on his trampoline.

he would jump, twist seamlessly

and gracefully

in midair, and then he would

land

only to do it all over again.

and I had the thought

(DBT Speak)

that it must be so nice

to be so weightless,

to never have to think about

what happens when you land—

I imagine you inside of it,

but in reality,

you are nowhere. I know

it was your time, Nana.

I know you had to go.

& 90 years (and 4 months)

is a long fucking time. 

I am glad I got to share this earth 

with you,

if only for a little while.

You would outlive us all

But now I’m not so sure.

I remember being little

And sitting in the crook of your arm

In that big old armchair

While we did the word search

Together.

It was our thing. & after we had found

every missing word,

You would have me sign my name

To the corner of the page

& date it. Today,

You don’t live next door. Instead,

You live in a nursing home

On the edge of town.

& I live 700 miles east of you.

But whenever Mom visits you—

Three times each week these days,

I video in to say hi.

How are you feeling?

I love you nana. (100 bushels).

& I think you still know the words

Missing from the hollow of your mouth.

I can see the understanding in those sea glass

Eyes, but all you can really manage to say is—

You were a wonderful kid.

My throat goes tight &

I am 4 years old, 5 years old, 6–

I am a child curled up in my nana’s lap

Searching for those missing words.

Hi, nana. I love you, nana

(100 bushels).

How are you feeling?

deathday

in good fashion:

by trying to forget you

ever existed

in the first place.

But of course

you’ve never appreciated

my silence on the matter.

You worm your way into

my consciousness

in a way that is undeniable,

unforgivable.

& to tell you the truth:

I’m not entirely mad about it.

There are only so many

ways I can say

I miss you;

I wish you could come home again.

So I will leave you with this, Dad:

ignorance is bliss

but I have never been that good

at forgetting,

least not about you.

So I will remember you,

in all your glory, in all your sickness,

until the very end.

Will you remember me too?

am

I

still

dreaming

of

you?

you aren’t even here.

after your birth,

somewhere more than 50

after your death.

& I never got to meet you,

but man have I heard some stories.

my mother has woven a rich tapestry

made out of you.

she has given her children glimpses

of you, their grandfather, their

Papaw. I wish I could have known you.

I don’t know what you would have made of

who I am now—so different from the child

I once was. but that’s okay.

because when I go back to the holler

where you were born and buried,

I still see your footprints,

calcified in the mud.

I still see signs that once,

you were here. you were alive.

& maybe—just maybe

part of you still is.

I learned that

the manner in which I walk

developed in order to alleviate

pain.

I tell the doctor

that, in the past, it’s been suggested that

I have hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

without looking up

from the x-rays of my left knee,

she says, “That sounds about

right.” but to tell you the truth:

the first doctor I saw

for a joint injury, the morning after

I dislocated my (left) kneecap,

diagnosed me right away,

scribbling

the name of the condition

in his notes without actually

telling me… I only

found out after an unrelated

hospital visit–

almost a decade later.

& tonight, my knee buckled beneath me

while I was in the shower

& I caught myself on a grab bar

installed for someone much older

than me.

my breath rattled in my lungs.

I am 26 years old.

I am not supposed to have

a pain-reducing gait,

a bad knee that aches when

it rains.

It was never supposed to be this way.

tonight, 10 years after the first

dislocation/sublux/sprain/strain/

miscellaneous pain,

I still don’t feel any better.

that the reason you felt so ill &

the reason you carried a hiking backpack

on your narrow shoulders

bulging with its contents—

was because you had recently run away

from home. you had no choice.

as you told her,

you were in a

domestic violence situation

& isn’t it weird that we call

domestic violence a situation

and not a culmination? a result?

a consequence?

you walked here in the heat.

and I wonder at how people like you

(like us)

find a library and decide that

this is the safest place we can be.

when you fainted,

we got you a fan, an ice pack,

a bottle of apple juice.

we let you lay on the floor by the computers

until you felt better.

and what is that if not good

customer service?

what is that if not

our solemn duty as members

of the same species? the same likeness?

I still don’t know your name,

and you don’t know mine,

but in this moment we are one with the

big wide world.

& inside it, we keep going.

going, going.

until we reach some place

better, kinder.

if there’s such a thing as

sanctuary,

I imagine it to be quite like

a library.

Your birthday

So I suppose it’s time

For the poem

I write every year.

I wish I could give you flowers.

& also that I was not

700 miles away from where

We buried you.

But the truth is that

Life goes on,

& not always for the better.

If you were alive now,

Things might be the same.

You would be emailing me

Letters of doom and

damnation,

Never allowing me to simply exist

As I am, without conditions.

There were always conditions.

I miss the emails.

& I never thought I could.

But I miss any sign of you,

Alive, if not well.

I don’t know if heaven is real, Dad

But if it is,

I hope you found it.

that the world behind

the skin of my forehead

is war

torn?

there are bodies here,

strewn across the grass of my cortices.

each one holds a rifle—

the kind with the blade protruding

from the end of the barrel.

the walls of my skull

are covered in its absurdity,

in hieroglyphics that have no meaning

or translation. this land

is split down the middle,

two lobes of gooey flesh

that know only how to hurt,

how to ache, never how to

clean up afterwards.

On a brisk Wednesday in February.

& I will be 26 in 4 days.

When he was tortured,

Mathew Shepard was only 21.

When she was stabbed to death,

Brianna Ghey was just barely 16.

& when my father screamed at me

For dating a trans man

Until the early hours of the morning

On a school night,

I was almost 17.

I was going to tell you the first time

He told me I was going to burn

In hell,

But it happened so many times that

I can’t remember anymore.

That type of thing—the condemnation

Of a parent,

It stays with you.

It sinks into your bones

Until it becomes part of the fabric

Of what makes you

You.

To be honest,

I never thought I would live

To be in my late-twenties.

To be fair,

I never thought I would make it to the

3rd grade,

But that’s another story.

& yeah most of that was my

Mental illness,

My habitual suicidality.

But would you believe me if I said

That being depressed wasn’t everything?

It’s something, certainly,

But there’s always been this underlying fear

That people want to hurt me.

& the problem is that I’m not

Exactly wrong.

Sam Nordquist’s body

Was found last week.

He was only 24 when he died,

Raped & beaten & viciously abused

For an entire month,

If not longer.

& why do I live when he did not?

What is so special about me that

I get all the luck?

Sam deserved to live.

That’s really all there is to it.

Sam deserved to live.

but my breath

tonight—

& isn’t

suicide

really just

another kind of

silence?

how when the sun hits

something metal

& you’re looking right at it,

you can still see it when you look away?

when you close your eyes?

that is what this is like, today.

you have been gone

for three years, two months.

& still, when I close my eyes,

I can see you, I can see you.

your skin is still a ruddy red,

& your beard is more white than anything

else.

& you are smoking a cigarette,

twisted black tendrils of serpentine smoke

unfurling in the sky.

even when I’m not looking back,

your image still follows.

keep following, dad.

this is the one way you can

stay with me.

plays a sonata

along the xylophone of

my ribcage

& I keep wondering

when this will be over—

how long before I’m no longer

afraid of men who remind me of my

father?

how long before I can just

exist

without the memory of him

haunting me?

I just want to feel better,

but I still get the nightmares.

the smell of marijuana and nicotine

still throw me back into

the recesses of my

adolescence

where I am prey on the dinner plate

of a predator who knows my every

twitch & twinge.

I don’t want to be scared anymore.

I just want to be okay.