You have the power to disrupt anti-transgender hatred
I was a hate meme in 2015. I know the beast of psychological warfare we are facing in a unique and visceral way. I was a 2016 slam finalist for the Breathe in Poetry Collective and subsequently stormed the Verses Festival scoring second to the last place in the Canadian Individual Poetry Slam. Poetry doesn't seem accessible, it was never what my dreams said first, but they are the spells that get me there. I earned my metaphors.
Love is and has always been our weapon.
Transcript:
If love letters are sent to the wrong address does the emotion still reach you?
Envelopes sit unopened, waiting, begging; are they really lost?;
Just think they are ignored, forgotten about.
If love letters get forwarded, your name is spelled wrong,
do they ever make it to you?
If god stamped my soul with a name and I changed it does he think that I rejected him, or is his love still filling out a void I want no part in, hoping his love won't drown me- that I have built a boat somehow and I am rising out of this pit filling up with god's love when there is a portal at the bottom draining away all that was meant for me, threatening to consume me.
Can the name I was given at birth sting a little less as others praise her beauty? Can I let it wrap around me like a mask while I pour cement on my feet so that this real never rises to the surface again, so I can survive being the perceived me... wrap god's love around my neck so I am pulled to the surface again, the flesh of my feet left bleeding on the bottom hoping this sacrifice will be enough for the beast.
Why didn’t I consider these things when I decided to become me?
If love letters are sent to the wrong address does the emotion still reach you?
Envelopes sit unopened, waiting, begging; are they really lost?;
Just think they are ignored, forgotten about.
If love letters get forwarded, your name is spelled wrong,
do they ever make it to you?
If god stamped my soul with a name and I changed it does he think that I rejected him, or is his love still filling out a void I want no part in, hoping his love won't drown me- that I have built a boat somehow and I am rising out of this pit filling up with god's love when there is a portal at the bottom draining away all that was meant for me, threatening to consume me.
Can the name I was given at birth sting a little less as others praise her beauty? Can I let it wrap around me like a mask while I pour cement on my feet so that this real never rises to the surface again, so I can survive being the perceived me... wrap god's love around my neck so I am pulled to the surface again, the flesh of my feet left bleeding on the bottom hoping this sacrifice will be enough for the beast.
Why didn’t I consider these things when I decided to become me?
I have never stopped believing in God.
In the winter of 2014 I was raped on a chair while intoxicated, resulting in lower back pain so severe that I had to leave work early the next day and I was in an car accident on my way home. I asked 3 people if I could live with them as I sought to live in a space where I could figure out my gender stuff. All said no. The next option I had was a person who strangled and raped me on a chair in a closet and I had a near death experience of returning to my body from the void, grateful to be alive. I was in shock and found the strength to leave after coming out as Paint at the Arts & Music Festival Astral Harvest, where I performed two years later, summoning a quaint audience as I explained why I believe in Magic.
to disrupt an anti-transgender space, craft a container for this poem to play, sharing the truth of what happens when we do not have safe places to exist in the world.
Transcript: "Where We Are Real" #wherewearereal
When you call me by my birthname, you are contributing to circumstances which led to my rape.
I was trying to figure out when it happened by scrolling through instagram selfies,
hoping to catch a look in my mismatched eyes indicating that I'd been violated.
The closest I could find
was one with a caption that said
"We go where we are real"
And I know it was somewhere around then,
I don't know the time or day of the week or even what month it happened in...
It was - a moment outside of time, when I was awakened with a bag over my head, dragged to a closet, and chained to a chair
"We go where we are real"
These are the cursed words which passed through my consciousness even as I had other lovers to touch my body and caress my skin in a tender kiss it didn't matter… This one wasn't afraid to be gay for me or straight for me. Didn't care if I kept my breasts or told them goodbye.
I was scared, not knowing what my body wanted and here I felt safe to explore that, be honest about that.
And so I hide myself from my other lovers,
even though I never intended too,
told this one first that my name was Paint & a schism was created:
Between boy me and girl me not realizing I could be just me and my lovers would love me all the same.
When you call me by my birthname, when you call me she, you are contributing to the circumstances which lead to my rape.
I am so afraid to ask for Paint, to ask for they
because these people,
the people who raped me
offered to use whatever pronouns I needed,
whatever name I choose and they would respect it instantly.
So I was willing to tolerate certain violations because these were the ones,
the only ones I thought,
who would accept me authentically.
And yes, I was gravely mistaken in that assumption, but still the words are true:
"We go where we are real"
where we don't need long drawn out explanations and answers questions about our desires that we aren't even sure about yet or lie, say we are unsure because it is easier for you to process my confusion that my authentic declaration of self. In this world, I am not real, I am looked over, glazed past, a body which you've gendered, laying out my destiny as soon as I was born, without ever asking me who I was, what I wanted to be, how I felt.
Under the touch that raped me I was real.
They knew exactly who I was and never doubted my existence
and yet their hands crawled all over my boundaries
and I didn't say no because I was so grateful to exist.
when you call me by my birthname.
when you call me she.
you are contributing to the circumstances that led to my rape
in a world that says I am not real.
I was trying to figure out when it happened by scrolling through instagram selfies,
hoping to catch a look in my mismatched eyes indicating that I'd been violated.
The closest I could find
was one with a caption that said
"We go where we are real"
And I know it was somewhere around then,
I don't know the time or day of the week or even what month it happened in...
It was - a moment outside of time, when I was awakened with a bag over my head, dragged to a closet, and chained to a chair
"We go where we are real"
These are the cursed words which passed through my consciousness even as I had other lovers to touch my body and caress my skin in a tender kiss it didn't matter… This one wasn't afraid to be gay for me or straight for me. Didn't care if I kept my breasts or told them goodbye.
I was scared, not knowing what my body wanted and here I felt safe to explore that, be honest about that.
And so I hide myself from my other lovers,
even though I never intended too,
told this one first that my name was Paint & a schism was created:
Between boy me and girl me not realizing I could be just me and my lovers would love me all the same.
When you call me by my birthname, when you call me she, you are contributing to the circumstances which lead to my rape.
I am so afraid to ask for Paint, to ask for they
because these people,
the people who raped me
offered to use whatever pronouns I needed,
whatever name I choose and they would respect it instantly.
So I was willing to tolerate certain violations because these were the ones,
the only ones I thought,
who would accept me authentically.
And yes, I was gravely mistaken in that assumption, but still the words are true:
"We go where we are real"
where we don't need long drawn out explanations and answers questions about our desires that we aren't even sure about yet or lie, say we are unsure because it is easier for you to process my confusion that my authentic declaration of self. In this world, I am not real, I am looked over, glazed past, a body which you've gendered, laying out my destiny as soon as I was born, without ever asking me who I was, what I wanted to be, how I felt.
Under the touch that raped me I was real.
They knew exactly who I was and never doubted my existence
and yet their hands crawled all over my boundaries
and I didn't say no because I was so grateful to exist.
when you call me by my birthname.
when you call me she.
you are contributing to the circumstances that led to my rape
in a world that says I am not real.