Darkroom

  
BLESSINGS
       
  i left just before they allowed us to marry
  and before abortions were legal 
  i arrived 
  to another place where the four walls 
  would house more extended dumb trauma 
  i unpacked the boxes
  inside, a shattered house blessing
  from your catholic mother
  i tried to outrun the church
  but 
  down from the ceiling 
  came snakes
  made of light, by light
  when i said hold me 
  i meant crush me 
  your arms covered my eyes 
  a fleshy border
  framing the slithering
  the only protection you could offer was physical
  the voices came later
  on the bus 
  in the november 3pm blue sunset
  look at my eyes, i said 
  it’s the cocktail they gave me
  the doctors that gathered around my body 
  like crows around a crumb 
  it’s that cocktail, i’m sure
  sertraline
  seroquel
  whatever
  look at my eyes, i said 
  i could do with some help
  help that didn’t feel like dissecting
  i declared war on my body and won 
  now i’m a ghost 
  soft, 100% cotton sheet, two holes 
  help can be as simple as looking me in the eye 
  and admitting ‘you look different’ 
  something has changed


Darkroom
       
  in the red jelly, 
  of safe light
  you slip me
  under,                  a film
                                  of thick water
  enveloping all my edges, 
  my gaze forms beneath your hand, the temperature of this and us not too far off, the steady right to 
  left rock, babying the grey, like spit on a shadow, deepening 
  
  in this ratio my body appears christlike, splayed a sunday before, in your cream cotton, letting the 
  light in, letting the leak out, legs moved apart by the echo of Mapplethorpe’s frame, i grow beneath 
  your lens and close my eyes to the sound 
  
  of a shutter
  
  of a decisive moment
  
  of trust 


WE
       
  1.	  Admitted we were powerless in the face of It — that our dreams had become hijacked
  2.	  Came to believe that reciting the names of the dead would wake them up
  3.	  Made a decision to share our words and images publicly, under the care of what would later 
          be revealed as undercover police
  4.	  Made a searching and fearless inventory of all the gendered lies
  5.	  Admitted to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our traumas
  6.	  Were entirely ready to go beyond domestication
  7.	  Humbly asked the undercover police to share their resources
  8.	  Made a list of all sites of the siren on our body, and became willing to say no
  9.	  Made the number of us so vast that It started to get shivers, feel fear
  10.   Continued to take personal inventory of all of our dead
  11.	   Sought through dissociation and care to improve our conscious admittance of lies, as we 
           understood It, and the hidden ones, as what they always were: 
                                                                                                                            voids, empty, ruins
  12.	   Having had an awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry these secret words 
           to workers, faggots, outsiders, the sick, the dying
  13.	   On the day you receive this, begin to dream without limits