#prose 2015

When tired thoughts begin to turn inward and twist upon themselves... When breath is just another movement, a sound in silence that rings... When blood is pulse and throb and ceaseless rushing beneath the skin... When darkness crowds in at the edges of vision, bringing the weight of sleep...

Sing for me.

Every whisper a new note. Every breath a crescendo. Every movement a counterpoint to every word from your lips.

Let me hear the love in your voice. Let me listen to the soul of you coming through these tired ramblings.

Let your guard down. Let me in.

I will create gardens in oasis of thought for you. I will take refuge in the strange and shining dreamings you create.

I will reach for you, hold you, bring you nearer, With the taste of poppy and asphodel on my tongue. Oils that burn through whatever they have spiked for a night of Journeying.

Valerian spiraling through rose-colored liquid. Shine of two elements that will never truly mix.

Separate, and beautiful in their separateness. Dancing with each other in harmony, though they will never truly join as one.

It is as it should be. It is as it was meant to be.

Breathe. Move. Let me hear you...

If I Dream, let me Dream. And if I wake, let me wake to sweet memories and new Knowledge and Wisdom.

If I am taken in the arms of the Gods, Let my every thought be of what Newness I will return carrying.

Thoughts turn ever inward, to a new and winding road. Breath lifts the fragile wicker of ribs under flesh... Slow and steady as the heart. Darkness rushes in, fleeing after the light; hunting as fiercely as any Grim.

I will follow into Darkness. I will follow, with Words on my lips and Song in my soul. The Oracle lies Dreaming...

Stand.

Stand, as waters rise cold and dark and all-encompassing around you. As hands go numb and fingers refuse to move. When flesh turns blue and shrivels, nothing but the smell of brine turned to stinging agony in your nostrils.

Stand.

Stand in fire and flames and heat that caresses. Bold as a lover's grasp and just as fierce. Before comforting heat turns to blazing pain in the moment between heartbeats. Rush of breath, before you exhale in a strangled scream.

Stand.

Stand against the wind that howls and tears at your skin. That wears away the rocks and beats against the trees. Stand against the force that turns solid stone to dust, and shifts the boundaries of the desert. Struggle for air as every new breath is stolen from your lungs.

Stand.

Stand as the earth moves beneath your feet. Stand as fissures open, break, and become yawning caverns seeking your death; body thrown to the ground below. When all is torn apart, your foundation shattered and nothing more than a prayer unsaid.

Stand.

Child of the deeps, of emotion running wild with the waves. Offspring of fire, of burning passion and igniting will that dances in flame. Scion of the air that moves, that moves through every body until it ends, gasping. Son of earth, of root and rock passing to the center of your world.

Stand.

Allow your body to be more than it is. Move with the tides; do not become the rock on which they break. Feel, breathe, know, accept... become.

Growth is pain. Pain that burns in your veins and cauterizes all wounds. Blaze with it, make it your own. Do not become the fuel for those flames, inhabit the fire itself.

Breath is life. Rise and fall of your chest, the movement of lungs against the cage of your ribs. Heartbeat... continuous drumbeat in your ears; the rhythm of life itself. The cadence of existence. Do not allow the wind to steal what is yours. You are more... become!

Earth is your solid ground. There will always be more, the further down you travel. Sink your roots so deep you can never be thrown from balance. Sure-footed, confident, stand tall. Take pride in who you are, in what you are becoming. The earth moves.... move with it; do not allow yourself to be shaken.

Feel. Intuit. Let will and instinct guide your movements; make them as sure as any you've ever known.

Breathe. In; the flow of all that is. Out; the continuing of all that was.

Know. Here in this moment You Are. Present, unmovable, connected and sure.

Accept. Here is your place, for it is yours and yours alone. Take it up, no one else is capable.

Become. The world is ever-changing, and our energy moves with it. If you make your energy a destination; your body a holding cell; you cut it off and it will die.

Feel the flows. Let them move you; guide you. Breathe, let it dance as it will; unfettered. Accept, there is nothing but the moment and here, You Are. Become, there is no greater goal than to grow and to be. To learn, and to understand.

teach me to hear mermaids singing...- Sirens and echoes, lost in the mist.

...

Sophomoric, She told me. Oh, youthful and vain-

Longing. Wistfulness. Homesickness for something I neither know, nor remember. A feeling of loss from the moment I first had memories...

I wrote stories from the moment I knew how... made them up and told them as I went, without fear or understanding of judgement. I shared my innermost heart and soul, in hope that someone knew what I was talking about.

Half-remembered dreams, well-loved and called up in dark moments. Dogeared volumes of high fantasy and myth recalling a high green country, filled with dark places in deep woods and caverns lost in fog. A world of overgrown paths and tangled ways. Where beasts lurk in the dark to waylay unwary travelers. Sphinxes and Sirens with riddles and traps. A world where I was always in danger, and where wits were as good a weapon as any you could be given. Music forgotten upon waking with lyrics that made me cry in my sleep. Rhythms and movements I should not have known, and knew anyway.

And then I grew up... or so I thought.

Then came horror and trauma and pain too much to be borne. What had been a hope and a tower of thought and intelligence became my prison. Words dried on the page like broken things... Useless and as dead as old poets, and made half so much sense.

And what was I without my words? What was I without a pen in my hand, and dreams in my mind? And so I stopped writing. I repressed my pain and closed the Gap behind me that had been my doorway, my gate into hidden worlds.

After the pains of childhood, of a twisted and corrupted youth... I went back again. I found the door overgrown. Shattered on rusted hinges that were so tangled up in thorns and ivy I thought it would kill me to open the way again. Words were waiting behind the door, that much I knew. Words that would make me bleed again, that would open up every old wound crusted over and forgotten.

But it was time, wasn't it...? Time to remember childhood forays into Faerie. I began to read again. I entered books that had, before now, been closed to me for one reason and another. Those old rules about where I was allowed to Travel no longer applied. I moved like one possessed, devoured and tore through new worlds, new characters. Caught them up like treasures in a dragon's horde and held them close...

They were not MINE.... but they would do for now.

And in those moments, when once I looked up again... When I saw the world changing around me again. Felt how Time moved differently when I had put some new Story aside and reached for another-

There was the Doorway again. Waiting.

It fell open without so much as a creak, decomposing into dust the moment I reached for it. And there they were again, as I had left them, and unchanged. My words. My worlds, created in the mind of a child who was no more Knowing than they should be at that age. Without fear, without doubt... with nothing but a burning Innocence and desire for Creation for its own sake. Not for glory, nor for anyone's sake but their own.

And... in the middle of it all... in dark Goblin leather and a sadistic smile. With heterochromic eyes and platinum hair... With sharp teeth and strange brows, and a wind from nowhere that moved him...

There was my King... my Muse, my Grace, my Awakening all over again.

To all the cisgendered heteronormative people who are now invading my inbox:

Sit. The FUCK. Back. Down.

You want to know the reason you're not wanted in Queer groups? Do you want to know why we don't want you around in our Safe Spaces? Do you want to know what we have against you? Why we're "punishing" you for being a certain way?

You are not Queer.

This should be reason enough, but it's becoming inherently obvious that it's not. While you may know what it is like to live in a place where you are scared to hold your partner's hand; and while you may have moments where you're afraid of physical violence; these are times for you. They are a constant for us. There are things that go along with being Queer in this country that you're not going to understand; no matter how "close" your experiences are. True, you might sort of maybe understand... But until it's your daily existence you're missing part of the big picture.

You aren't Trans/Gender Divergent.

You don't know what it is to be afraid to go into a restroom. You don't know what it's like to be worried every moment about "passing". You don't know what it is to fear society on that intimate of a level. To have your every waking moment defined by how society sees you, or may begin to see you if you're outed. You don't have to choose your clothing based on how you're comfortable being perceived on an almost instinctual-level. Deciding in the morning whether or not your comfortable explaining your presentation. Deciding whether or not you want to be yourself, or accepted.

You aren't just another statistic.

You don't have to live with the statistics of just how many Trans people are at risk for violent crime. Suicide is a very high risk for anyone Trans, particularly before they get on Hormone Replacement Therapy and especially for teens. [Not every Trans person is going to go on hormones. It's a personal decision, and comes with its own set of pros and cons.]

We have a right to our own spaces.

Anyone of a minority has a right to their own space, away from majorities who remind them of the institutionalized discrimination they face on a daily basis. We need a breather, away from society at large and like it or not, you are the face of that society. Do you blame other minority groups for needing time away? Do you invade their retreats with the same entitlement you approach Queer spaces? Do you force your way into weddings you didn't get an invite to? Do you demand to go to house parties where you don't know the hosts? There are going to be things that are Not. For. You. You don't get to go everywhere, and you aren't welcome sometimes. Learn how to be an adult about it, because that's life.

We actually love having Allies.

We appreciate the allies we have, and accept you for who you are. But you're not a special snowflake just because you're an Ally, and you don't get a fucking cookie for being a decent human being. It is not our job to educate every Joe Blow who comes along who can't use google. It's not our duty to explain how being Trans works to someone who really just wants to know what's between our legs. It's not our responsibility to be an endless fount of knowledge for you to drink at.

Google exists. Blogs and websites and educational material exists. Let us live our lives in peace, ok? If you can't figure out what gender I am some days GREAT. That's probably what I was aiming for in the first place. I don't give a shit what equipment you've got unless we're in a relationship. I couldn't POSSIBLY care less what your gender identity is, unless it influences your pronouns and even then, I just want to know how you prefer to be addressed so I don't fuck it up too badly.

In Conclusion:

There is no letter for Ally in our acronym; those As stand for Asexual, and Aromantic. Two subsets of the Queer spectrum that quite often get overlooked. When you appropriate the As for yourselves, you are insulting anyone who identifies that way.

Our spaces are just that: OUR spaces. Society exists to cater to you if you identify how you were gendered at birth, and have heteronormative relationships. Leading roles in our movies are passed off to Cisgender people instead of Trans actors. Social experiments are conducted by Cisgender individuals and groups, instead of them coming and talking to us personally. Laws are made concerning us without our input. Our lives and our jobs are at stake here. So no.

You can stay out of our groups. Unless and until you know what it's like to live our lives, your opinion is just another unwanted voice and we have enough problems without adding your judgments to the mix. So by all means, keep on being an Ally. Every bit helps.

We're not punishing you for being an Ally, you're just not entitled to a seat at our table.

They say if you love something, to let it go and see whether or not it comes back to you. That you'll know it's really love, if it comes back. Doubt happens, people come and go from your life, and sooner or later, you're going to be the one left behind. Sooner or later, you won't be the one in the power position, and that's going to hurt. A lot.

Some day, you won't be someone's first choice, or even their second. And you're either going to be ok with that... Or you're going to learn that it's time to move on. It doesn't make it suck any less, but sometimes knowing it's going to happen is enough to prepare you.

It's ok to need people. It's ok to need people more than they need you. It's not ok to push for more than what they can honestly offer you. To extract promises they would not willingly offer to you, because you need them.

Love can be a beautiful thing, but it can also be deadly. It's a double-edged sword meant to protect and to inspire. But it's still a weapon, and it can be used as one. Until you've felt how deeply it can cut, you won't understand how someone can be terrified to be in love. To need so deeply, to yearn or to long for something that can turn and tear you to pieces if it is not returned.

Demanding love be returned will not shield you; and it may well only twist the blade into your own heart.

Love is a verb. It is something you do consciously, continually, as a choice. The feeling of being "in love" is something that will come and go throughout your life, and even fade in and out through a single relationship. If it fades, it doesn't mean you don't love someone anymore. It just means that you cannot coast on feelings alone anymore, and if you want to continue on you're going to have to work for it.

I'm a boi. He/His/Him pronouns. I might be female-bodied but I swear if you lump me in with "The Girls" again I'm going to get stabby.

I have a unique perspective on street harassment because while I operate within a HIGHLY feminine body, I am not female. I have dealt with being harassed since at least eight years old and that was for the tightness of my dance uniform. It doesn't matter how polite a female-bodied person is; I have been followed, harassed, stalked, and more because some asshole wanted to yell "nice tits" and got silence or a polite refusal. So you know what? NO. No you are not owed politeness from me.

You might not feel like you should pay for the "Sins of others" but guess what? Anyone who comes up to me in public is Schrodinger's Rapist. I sure as hell don't want you to be a rapist or out for anything more than conversation, but quite often there's an ulterior motive. Because none of you fucks ever walk up to someone you're not sexually attracted to. My life is full I am taken and even when I WAS with my partner, my TATTOOED WEDDING RING still went entirely IGNORED. So piss the fuck off.

I have had my phone tugged out of my hands, my book pushed aside, and my headphones ripped out so male-bodied people could "Talk" to me. It's not fucking cute, and it's invading my personal space and my right to safety. If you're not the kind of person who does that, more power to you. But if you're ignoring my "occupied" signals, then you'll also ignore any other time I say no.

I've tackled this topic several times already, and while I have spoken up about how labels apply to other people, I'm not entirely certain I've explained my own. The reasons I identify the way I do vary, and change from day to day. I keep discovering new reasoning, and discarding others that no longer apply to me. So... here's my list of labels.

Genderqueer/Boi

These two labels go hand in hand, and explain my gender and presentation. I am neither male nor female, and have recently begun to feel almost entirely Agender/Neutral/Androgynous. I am aware of how femme I dress and how it creates a walking contradiction. It doesn't matter. How I dress doesn't change my gender. I'm just as much of a boi in a skirt and makeup as I would be in jeans and a tshirt.

I am a femme-presenting, Queer Boi. I still prefer masculine pronouns, or the "they" set if you really don't see me as male. Which, honestly, is probably more accurate anyway. But the masculine pronouns tend to 'stick' better, which is one reason out of many why I prefer them.

Just because I am "femme" does not mean I am FEMALE. Please remember this.

Primal

At my core, I am Primal. Under every moment of refinement, of civility and cool politeness, is the Beast behind my eyes. I do not play by the same rules as most. I do not 'do' protocol and hierarchies except under extenuating circumstances. Take away all the life experience, all the learned wisdom, and we are all the same animals walking around in meat suits with some sort of consciousness keeping us moving. You get no deference from me simply for being older.

There's a difference if I respect you, or if you have a position of authority. In which case, if I don't like you I will at least respect your position.

Puppy

Puppy goes hand-in-hand with Primal. It is an expression of my innocence, my exuberance, and a playful nature that for a very long time has gone unseen. As it is an expression of my innocence; and therefore very easy to injure given my past; very few people get to see my Puppy. If I don't trust you on some level, you will never meet Helios.

Little

It has taken me a very long time to come to terms with my "little side." In daily life, I try very hard to take the mature tack on things. I try to keep my mouth shut, and keep my hurts to myself. Not to whine, or to complain overmuch about what is happening to or with me. [This definitely goes back to the Clan, and the constant reminders that there are things you speak of and things you don't. Talking about what pains you is a weakness, and therefore not to be spoken of.] I actually identify a bit more as a Middle than a Little, though there have been times when Dorvaleon has managed to get me quite a bit younger than I thought I was capable of.

This too, however, is an expression of what little innocence I have left. It takes even more trust to let out than my puppy. Do not ever expect to see me in true "little mode" because I don't often feel safe enough to explore that headspace.

Masochist

I'm not even entirely sure how deep my masochism goes. How much I can take, how far I can push myself. Because after my three years of hell, I decided to repress that part of myself. Forget how awful everything was, and ignore my capability to deal with pain. I'm re-learning, and figuring out I'm actually WAY more of a masochist than I thought. I like heavy thuddy pain, and the sharp sting that blades create. I like floggers, belts, crops, and slappy, paddle-like things.

As of this moment, bundled canes are the only type I can handle without having a panic attack. It doesn't mean I won't work back up to canes at some point, MAYBE, but it does mean they're off the table for the foreseeable future .

Sadomasochist

This term is actually probably a little more accurate than just "masochist." I like causing pain almost as much as receiving it. Biting, clawing, scratching... I like leaving my marks behind. I like the wince of pain when weight settles onto bruising I've left behind. I enjoy the fuck out of seeing red lines on skin days after we've been together. I like knowing I made those! It amuses me. I don't use toys on other people generally speaking. But I'll enjoy the fuck out of getting my hands on someone.

Survivor

I am not a victim. I have been a victim. I have allowed myself to feel victimized. And, in all honesty, it's been the truth. However: I'm not allowing myself to be manipulated anymore. I'm not allowing other people to rule my life anymore. I have my freedom, I have my life, I have my self. I survived hell.

I have the tshirt to prove it, too.

Pagan/Dreamer/Reader

I am an eclectic Pagan with a personal pantheon. I have certain Talents that inform my spiritual path, and help me learn more about myself. I have been a Tarot Reader for almost five years now. The cards are almost as important part of my path as anything else I do.

Yes I do Readings for other people, no I don't do them for free. Feel free to ask, if you want one though.

Educator

I don't use this label for myself often; in fact I wondered if I should even put it up here at all. However, I do think that there are people in the world I could teach things to, and teach well. I might not have the practical skills that many others in this community do; rope, wax, knives, impact play; but I have experience of another sort. Red flags, abusive relationships, self-protection, self-care, and things of that nature are definitely my forte.

Because people are more than their skill sets or lack thereof.

I am going to treat you kindly; learn from and teach you; because we all have things to share that help us grow as people.

Because dark thoughts don't mean dark soul.

We all have inner beasts. Those who tag as Primal are simply better connected to them, and more adept at letting them out without fear. In the aftermath... I will listen, and I will hope not to be judged.

Because dreams aren't more than fantasy until you make them so.

No matter where thoughts might wander, no matter what words may be said... until they are acted upon, whatever dreams may come, let them out. There may be more appreciative ears in this world than you think.

Because twisted doesn't mean morally bankrupt.

I'd rather be honest about my nature; and yours; than to lie and say I'm innocent, or always socially acceptable. I'd rather let out the beast, and let him run.

Because darkness is fascinating, and beautiful in its own way.

Light cannot exist without dark, and therefore darkness has its place. What the world would call dark, is usually only what feels unsafe; too wild, too uncivilized. I'd rather tear the mask from your face than allow it to remain... I'm in the process of shattering my own.

Because walking that line between nervousness and outright panic is beautiful.

Because terror and trust walk hand in hand, two sides of the same coin, and each is as needful as the other. Howl, Scream, Run.... let it loose. Let me see the fight warring in your eyes, and you will see the wildness in mine.

Because Thorns are just as beautiful as the Rose.