the whole world is watching

she seemed very put off and demanded to know what I wanted from her, but when I asked her if she was using Scrivener and what her project was she LIT UP

(a family history turned historical fiction — though the fiction part still scares her)

I heard this voice, harsh and flat but still distinctly in the vocal range that estrogenic puberty gives you — higher still my voice, but louder and angrier and clearer. The person in the center was reading — shouting, really — a poem about how home means nothing so much as obligation, a place you sleep at night because you still have to sleep somewhere. Every word was heavy with the raw pain that still feels, to me, like the most universal queer experience.

They finished and stepped out of the circle, to be replaced by another poet. Then a rapper. Then another poet. Then a crust punk with a guitar. It went on like that for an hour at least, each person taking only five or so minutes of the group’s attention but trying to make the most of it.

All kinds of people. A mid-60s white man who howled every syllable, his pauses and steps practiced like he’d done this since the seventies. A tiny nonbinary person in a huge denim coat who recited a loose (very loose) modern vernacular translation of a Latin poem. A towering man whose baggy jeans and white t-shirt somehow did not prepare me for his rap about being huggable. A blonde man with tangled dreads who screamed the refrain, “When was the last time you offered an olive branch?”

One person near me stepped into the circle and was met with cries of “first time!” She read nervously — a poem about being sick and being lovesick and being ready to marry someone who didn’t love you back.

And then the person with the masc voice turned to me. “Go. You’ve been trying to go all night.”

I stepped forward and mumbled, “first time?”

“First time!” they all shrieked.

I have written only a handful of poems in my life. The form is too subjective. I can’t tell if they’re good. But the few I’ve held onto I’ve polished endlessly, so that I’m happy with them more or less.

I read “Prayer of a Fact-Checker.” Which I wrote as if meant to be read aloud, like a confession, and I knew already where to put the emphases. but I’d never read it to anyone before. I’d never read anything to anyone before. Not like this.

The actual experience of reading it is blurry in my mind. But I could tell when something hit. An electricity in the air as I heard their reaction, like I’d landed a blow. I gave a little curtesy after the last line, to cheers.

Some writers want to die with filled notebooks, like Virginia Woolf. But I want to be read, desperately. It’s a high I’ve been chasing since I can remember.