Red-handed Expectations

 Chosen to to be a mother by birth but god knows there's plenty of ways to parent on this earth.

Not even thirty, but on bad days I need my cane, and still the doctor can't be bothered to get to the true bottom of my pain. 

For I was born to accept suffering, to the stigmatized yet holy anatomy, silently expected like the countless mothers before me in my bloodlines to be comfortable with blood on my hands...

I am expected to be comfortable with blood on my hands where men must learn it.

I have reached familiarity with that which causes most sulking men to find revulsion.

Firsthand red-handed where the men must distance themselves from the action.

Mine is blood shed without violence, without loss, only in absence. 

Yet the same fools who claim to understand my body and identity better will squirm if they listen too deep to these words.

They will dismiss the process of perpetual growth and destruction, though it follows the bloodied path they brag to walk in wars. 

The Children

 I exist in an angry state of mind in a dangerous place.

A place called Idaho that screams "Dont say gay" alongside Florida. 

I exist under attack and duress, within the power of anger.

Little men on their big bikes with guns they don't know how to aim.

For shame for shame for shame

I will go to Pride even if I've written a poem already about what to do in the event that I die there.

I will stand by the community that has shown me kindness, by my found family, by my brother.

I will not be silenced. I will say what I am.

I am bisexual.

I am non-binary, they/them, but if you must call me something, then  call me Sir because they had to put my brass balls on my chest to prevent chafing.

I was born to a body that is governed as "less than a man".

But I will take no more of that shit  which has been for twenty-six years shoveled down my throat that so many desperate little yee-yee boys and maga men gulp down like their coors lifeblood.

The same shit peddled by pathetic men who think no is a challenge and not an answer.

Nobody called for war but the privileged; because equality feels like oppression when their superiority is taken away.

"Its about the children!"

But then they aim at the queer ones.

They aim at other people's children.

I will not be cowed by cucks on bikes just because they were given a mic.

Not by men who will so readily turn their guns to the youth while swearing its for the good.

I will not be broken, I will not be silenced

I will not be shamed

If you force me to the corner I will choose violence.

I will not be silent, be compliant to bias

I will riot, my anger an invigorating balm upon appliance.

I will say gay and be gay

I am not a she I am They

They and gay and gay and GAY

You will never rip the word away from my lips

No matter the beating, nothing I haven't endured before with blood on my lips.

No amount of mouth breathing, knuckle dragging, scraggle bearded manged looking men will scare me straight.

I will say and STAY gay.

"Its about the children!" 

But then they're balls deep in their purity culture, where childish innocence is the epitome of female sex appeal.

I fucking said what I said.

For shame for shame for shame

"Its about the children!"

Until they disown their bisexual son, their trans daughter, until they bully them out of life by telling them its best to go with suicide.

Its about the children until its inconvenient to make sure they're fed.

About the children until someone's esteemed career is threatened.

Its about the children until they have to hold one another accountable for the wretched things one of their flock has done to them.

But then they will say eight year old me was "asking for" the janitor to lure me into his shop during recess.

Eight.

I was EIGHT.

LOOK ME IN THE EYE AND TELL ME I DESERVED IT

LOOK ME IN THE EYE AND SAY YOU ONLY WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE PREDATORS IN MY COMMUNITY WHEN YOU WON'T SPEAK UP ABOUT THE STRAIGHT ONES 

Look my friend Shannon in the eye and tell her she deserved it at age three.

Look my friend Ella in the eye and tell me her 7 month old daughter deserved it.

Don't say gay isn't about protecting the children.

Its about making sure those predators have a steady source that hopefully won't get knocked up with the evidence.

Its about the children until they actually have to protect them.

Don't say gay isn't about protecting the kids its about making it so the queer ones die off faster.

Its about making sure the broken book club reigns supreme.

Heartbeat

[ breif but graphic descriptions of miscarriage, reader discretion advised ]

There is a fading heartbeat. 
It is dying. 
You cannot end its suffering. 
You cannot end yours. 
You are septic, you are sick.
You're begging and pleading. 
There was no chance of saving a little heartbeat. 
You never wanted these invasive cells.

But there is a heartbeat. 

So you must suffer. 

You're in the hospital. 

You are on antibiotics. 

You are suffering... 

But still, there is a heartbeat. 

There is a heartbeat, product of conception struggling. 

Your body cannot pass it. 

There, there's a heartbeat. 
There was a heartbeat. 
You have a heartbeat. 
But it is not important. 

You live in the United States, where soon, a safe abortion is no longer an option. 

This would be a simple D and C. 

The cells are already doomed to die, but there is a heartbeat. 

This was not be an abortion. 
You are having a miscarriage. 

These cells have no chance within you. 

But the governor insists you give them a chance. 

So it will kill you, surely as a coathanger would.

You have no safe options.

There's a heartbeat. 

You have a heartbeat. 

But your heartbeat doesn't matter to them. 

You are a woman, you are property again..

You are lower you are beneath them. 

You are second plus to them.

You don't have rights. 

You don't have options. 

You just want to end the suffering of the cells to save yourself... 
But... There's a heartbeat. 

Now your heart is struggling. 

You are feverish 

You are dying

You're delirious. 

You are bleeding, bleeding, pleading...
None of this is right. 

But your rights don't matter. 

What what supposedly matters to the government? 
What matters to them is that dying clump of cells falling from your womb, the umbilical cord still connected, barely recognizable as human.

They swear this life matters to them but they will just as surely damn it to death and poverty, damn it to you fate if it is born with the cursed womb.

It is dangling by a thread. 

It does not matter that there's no chance of saving it. 

No amount of science, no amount of prayer.
It has a heartbeat

Even if it is no longer within your womb and destined to die.

It does not feel pain. 

All the pain is yours to feel because you have no rights here.

You're a criminal if you seek to end it to end this pregnancy. 

That was not a pregnancy, that was an invasion of your rights of your body, of your autonomy.

There's a heartbeat growing weaker. 

It's yours. 

You are dying. 
But there is still a heartbeat in the cells. So your death is irrelevant to them.
There are no heartbeats. 
You have died. 
For what?
Why?
The pro-birth regime; the once merely crooked government is now fully broken, twisted, and corrupted.

Church and state intertwined in a torrid love affair that will burn the bed they lie together in, fucking as the house burns down around them without care.

Church and state fucking atop your rights to your body, the patriarchal hard-on for power and control.

You have a heartbeat, but it was never truly yours in the eyes of the lovers burning the house down.

Your heartbeat, and you yourself, were only seen as nothing more than a broodmare. 
You were never a human to them. 

You were only a vessel for their sons. 

I still have a heartbeat. 

I will scream for those who don't because of these laws.

I will flaunt my tied tubes and scrambled eggs.

I do not want to birth a child into this world for fear they be born to bear the brand of the breast, the womb.

I will scream about my past use of plan B

I will applaud the man who bought it for me

I will shout that it failed me

I cannot afford to be silent about my miscarriage of 2015 because by the bastards that was abortion.

By my third tenant that was my right if you count it so!

"One's body is inviolable, subject to one's will alone."

By science it was not!

By my fifth tenant: 

"Beliefs should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world."

But I was nothing more to this system than a broodmare.

Tubes tied, I am a broken vessel.

What heartbeats really matter to them but their own numbered ones...

I am horrified... but I find solace knowing I will outlive the people who put forth legislation that will cost more lives than they think it will "save". 

If I Die At Pride

If I die at Pride, my name is Andi. 

Do not call me Andrea, I hate the name; but to change it is danger and shame.

If I die at Pride, my pronouns are They/Them, do not call me she; I was not strong enough to bear that title.
If I die at pride... tell my mother I was closer to a son than I ever was a daughter.
If I die at Pride, do not mourn my death, celebrate my life, return me to the earth; for I am a witch.
If I die at Pride, know I died screaming again. Know I've died at the stake before in another time. Know I will always outlive the hate.
If I die at Pride, my paternal grandmother and the aunt on that side are not invited to the service. I disowned them.
If I die at Pride know I curse the folk who are responsible with my dying breath. Know I will haunt them, eternal in my unrest.
If I die at Pride... send locks of my hair to my brother in sweden and my friend in the Netherlands.
If I die at Pride so many voices die with me.
If I die at Pride, know I died doing what I loved; speaking my truth and standing for human rights.
If I die at Pride, tell my boyfriend I loved him with every ounce of love I had, tell his daughter how proud I was to know her dad.
If I die at Pride, comfort my unofficially adopted children, Alex and Chelley.
If I die at Pride, bury me with a notebook and a pen, bury me with copies of my brother McCallum's books, bury me with dice.
If I die at Pride, I die by the fear of an uneducated man.
If I die at Pride, put "Hail Satan" on my gravestone. Put the tenants of the TST on my headstone, remind everyone of the words important to me.
If I die at Pride, lay me down with a rainbow, do not wear black.
If I die at Pride make my funeral the gayest there has ever been. I want a drag queen to read my eulogy, I want rainbows and life and love and everything GAY.
If I die at pride... I die fighting; just the way I lived.