Embers

There are all these ways of becomming. Here I am in this country of removals and while the government wants me dead, I feel so alive. How odd. I’ve been planning my death for decades and suddenly, I am ready to live. At the same time strangers want me to die. Here I am. This body has been removed so many times. But now it’s mine. And it is climbing heights I always thought I was too afraid to try. Have you ever listened to a song that felt like a tarot reading? Or as though the lyrics were translating the lines on your palm? This is love.

In this aliveness, there are poems. They have been my cape when I could barely stand. So, I continue to write and climb out of the removals and closer to this beautifully handsome, trans self.

This is also to say, thank you to all the presses and people encouraging poets to write and for supporting us through publishing. It spreads our words. A fire of language, mending.

Thank you to Twenty Bellows Press and their anthology, We Are the West: Embers for publishing my poem, “an investigation into the trafficked ghosts detouring your insides”.