Remember the Stars

I wanted to write. I wanted to write on every day since Berlin and in the days before. But how could I. Now. How could I when queer life is being attacked like this, direct and violent and deadly. Again. How could I with everything happening since then. How could I when there are no words.

I am tired. I am so, so tired.

I wanted to write, but instead I disappeared into my own maelstrom of echoes again and again, kids, teens, adults, screaming “What even are you?!”, “Dyke!”, “Faggot!”, “Monster!”, I feel their kicks and punches, feel like running, being hunted again. And all around, over and over, the news of all the hatred. The violence. Our fault. Of course. Red herrings and smoke screens. Of course. Again. And again. And again.

And I am tired. I am so, so tired.

Imagine we were human. Imagine we deserved to live. Imagine.

Maybe one day. Someday.

But for now…

I wanted to write. I wanted to write on every day since Berlin and in the days before. And maybe now, when everything hurts and hope is heavy, is as good a time as any.

I’ve been a writer ever since I first started writing poetry as a child. Words have always been a way to make sense of things. Little lights in the dark.

In 2005 I started writing online. Through trauma, grief, and heartbreak. About Tuesday mornings, and dreams in sleepless nights. All through my twenties until one day in my early thirties I got quiet and disappeared without really noticing and the words disappeared too.

And maybe now, when everything hurts and hope is heavy, is a good time to try and find them again, find glimmers, and write words, and thoughts, and poetry, little letters into the void, about what is left of a life when illness takes it away, about falling into your own maelstrom of echoes again and again.

Something to hold on to. Little lights in the dark.

Around two years after I made my home online, sometime in 2007, I found TWLOHA and the story that started it through a friend. Both have stayed with me since then. I reread it a few times over the last few months, adding to the echoes.

“We were made to be lovers bold in broken places.”

And maybe more than that Renee’s reply to Jamie’s question, what she’d say, if her story had an audience. She said

“The stars are always there but we miss them in the dirt and clouds. We miss them in the storms. Tell them to remember hope. We have hope.”

“Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars.”

Something is shifting and changing, has been for a while and is now tipping over into something else, something different, something cold and heavy that makes the chest tight and the nights a little darker with eyes and sharp teeth.

I miss the little lights.

I wanted to write.

The world has turned into hell and I miss the stars.