#open journal writing
It rained again. The last four days, it poured rain like bullets and flooded the sidewalks and gutters of my street. I sat downtown in the middle of the night waiting for the bus in the pouring rain, and I reveled in the familiar beat of each drop against my body. I slept with my window open and a lullaby upon my leaking skylight.
This morning, I woke to smoke. In my lungs, in my room, in the sky. Not from my home or anyone nearby, not enough for anyone else to notice yet, but I saw it. What could be so dry to still burn after four days of heavy rain?
when the poet falls for the artist who creates masterpieces with pencil and paper, what more can he do but write love songs and sonnets and stories of what one day could be memory; what he prays will one day be memory?
i knew you once when i was young and didn’t yet know myself and my heart would leap when i would see you and it leaps again at the sound of your voice, skips a beat each time you laugh and races when you speak my name.
i knew you once and now again and my body craves to feel yours against mine, skin on skin and fingers intertwined and the brush of your beard against my chest as you lay your head to rest and in the moment all i would ask is to remain safe together forever, just yourself and i-
and i will write a thousand poems and fill endless pages if that is how you’ll fall for me as i have begun to fall for you, and all i ask in return is a kiss and a picture of the future you desire so i can write your dreams into plans into reality one day.
one day soon you will leave town and i will too and all i can hope is that these spoken words and late night calls and hide and seek on the switch can be enough to keep my name on your mind, but if your thoughts should be occupied by another one day, i pray you believe me when i say i am happy as long as you are smiling and safe.
caffeine overdose at midnight, wake for work eight hours later. black coffee killing, switch to caffeine in a can to die a little faster; six hundred milligrams in an hour six hundred more two hours before- maybe ive got a death wish or maybe im an addict again:
just like that my mind is back in a hospital bed with a cocktail of chaos and pills in my stomach and my bestfriends next door with a cocaine overdose and just like that im sober for a month and just like that im overdosing again and just like that im too drunk to walk and just like that im screaming at the stars and cursing god and just like that-
just like that, ive got my six month chip from narcotics anonymous but theres no anonymity amongst these narcotics i still hide in my room tucked as bookmarks in novels ive never read, too busy trying to fulfill a main character god as a victim complex and living through death each morning, bottles in a backpack and xanax back on my tongue.
flash forward three years, living clean and serene and a bit insane trying to keep safe in a city of cocaine and heroine and liquor shops everywhere you look, addicted to caffeine and nicotine but at least I know I’ll survive these overdoses and withdrawals.
My little brother, who will not be named for privacy reasons, is trans too. He’s entering ninth grade at a catholic school where he still has to wear the female uniform- he’s not out yet, to anyone but me and my siblings.
My oldest sister calls herself a demigirl. She’s panromantic and demisexual. She’s out to everyone, technically, but she never bothers to correct or remind someone if they forget.
My sister, the one just two years beneath me, is genderfluid and bisexual. She flirts shamelessly with her best friend- and with mine, for that matter. She hangs my old bi pride flag from before i knew i was gay so confidently.
My last sister, older than me but not the oldest, is cisgender and heterosexual. She’s in a relationship with a man who is also cisgender and heterosexual.
My father always wanted sons, but… maybe not like this. I believe that whatever deity prepared my brother and I for this lifetime knew that he would raise us into a life of toxic masculinity if we we’re born the way we identify: they saved us from that curse with another.
When you think about the gay community and especially gay men, your first thought often isn’t the issues around hookup culture or the rampant pedophilia, but the longer you’re a queer man in the community the more you see it. Grindr allows men the age of my grandfather to pursue boys who have only just turned eighteen, queer boys who haven’t even experienced a healthy relationship with another man. Men with smaller bodies who look younger being told their body type looks better hairless in attempts to make them look even younger. Being a queer person comes with so much fear from outside of the community that we often forget the dangers we still need to protect ourself and others from.
one day, i will have to beg my own mother, who carried me nine months and raised me dozens more, to say my name and not the one on my birth certificate, the chosen name i boast with pride but she hides and pretends she doesn’t hear my sisters use- i will have to beg my own mother to say her only son’s name and not because she doesn’t know it but because she will not use it and one day i will have the money to move away from this city she resides in and she will choose the fork of the road that i follow if, no, when, she refuses to say my name.
one day, i will leave the roads i know in the neighborhood i was raised in, a part of a city i was born in that never knew me, no more than my own mother did. i will finally grow my garden in the yard of a home i have made with those i love, who love me and use my name with the same pride i use it with, and i will finally be able to breath. perhaps ill build the home with the man i recently reconnected with after nearly five years, or perhaps it will be with the couple wanting me to made that duo a triad or perhaps i have not yet who that home will be made with, but i know that home will stand on a foundation of chosen names shouted out with pride.
