musings in the wake of another mass murder
Don’t tell my sister --
sometimes I listen to music
when I’m doing Pilates.
Maybe I like distraction.
Maybe I want to feel
In community.
Maybe it’s ok because
I ignore the beat.
Today I tune in spoken word,
newly obsessed,
devouring the canon of
Andrea Gibson
their words
somehow stolen from my heart
before I even knew they were there.
I’m rolling like a ball,
tossed by the waves of
“Orlando.”
My rolling becomes rocking,
destabilized.
“If you are alive, raise your hand.”
Caught off balance
I rock on
And then
i collapse
Tears streaming from my face
body spasms
uncontrollable grief.
Bandanas ripped away,
revealing wounds
I didn’t know I carry
so deep in my heart.
I hold my queerness at arms’ length --
longing to clasp it to my chest
where it tangles in a quarter-century marriage;
testament to different times,
when it was the only way
we knew to define
love etched in DNA
before language bound.
Bullets stopped the Pulse
of friends I’d never know.
Dances I’d never dance.
Songs I’d never sing.
Stories I cannot tell.
But my pulse is steady.
Testament to my distance
from the epicenter of this
white manmade disaster.
Each sob
an aftershock
too powerful
to ignore.
They rain down bullets,
an American form of climate shock
too big to process
without going numb.
I start to list them
But by the time I begin
I’m out of date.
January 25, 2023