i feel useless at a lot of things. the electricity they ran through my brain at fifteen, leaves me forgetful. i don’t have my grandfather’s faith, his persistent ability to pray and ask for forgiveness. i trip up, and i am heavy in my boots. i want to say i love you more often than i do. i worry about everything and i’d fail a meditation class if i tried.
but i am good at loving the world. i am good at finding a queer, messy god in the morning light. they’re peach and ocean blue and there are rays of light pouring from their scalp. they cough up flocks of birds, and i give thanks. i will make a mess of this.
there’s a childhood somewhere behind me, distorted like tv static. church pews and communion juice and blood. i am watching my past like a dream. i say the wrong thing. put my trust in the wrong places a thousand times, before the right ones. hesitate before reaching for a hand i want so badly, to hold. leave the church i was raised in, just so i can hold it. hand in a loveable hand.
condemnation, for what was once unconditional. i change my gender. write poems to some gay god of my own imagining. do not repent. i will make a mess of this and they will wait, patient for my poems. i do not follow the verses i was taught to memorise. only the steep of his jaw as i lean in to kiss him. only the queer, heartbroken poets before me. heavy in my boots.
but i am good at this, this unrequited love for a world that has sunk its teeth in and drawn blood. i see the sunrise. pink and alive. thank this gay god for asking nothing of me. i am good at finding beauty where there was pain. citrus between my teeth, sticky juice down my chin, poems, kissing him, become my version of something holy.
my communion is two trans bodies holding each other in the 3pm winter light. there are scars on my hips, my spine, but his chest is pressed against me. we’ve both turned to the sky.
