Praying for her Nádleehi

Woman,

You spend years wrapping me up

in your selves

Wind me tight

Blueing breasts and juiced out abdomen..

"Yuh know muh lub home but sometime...

When did I realize I was queer? How do you read backwards? How do you read between and under and through a life lived thinking there was nothing else?

There is a misconception that the love of a man is hard, reminiscent of a stone statue. They are harden, unmoving, craggy and as such brittle.

I’m tired of sitting. Now, I am standing up.

don’t you dare break her gaze

don’t your dare break the chain

the stories must live on

it has come to my attention that we don't exist 

Even after all these years

I still scared to say these words in public,

still caustous

to let Gay spilt my teeth open

my body was trying to speak a language

my mind hadn't learnt yet

I moved to Canada for university convinced that in that free space (a space, I didn’t then realise, where what freedoms it could acclaim were built on Indigenous genocide, continuous exploitation and theft) I could be more myself.

Since I last saw you I’ve been thinking. Thinking about you. Thinking about us, about home, about those kids whose journey mirrors yours and mine, A journey walking with fear. 

She wanted the baby to be okay. Slowly the vision started and she knew, she knew the way that mothers’ know. She knew that this was her child, even though the person in her vision was not a baby, not even a small child, she knew that this was her baby and yes her child was beautiful.

Reyna was 21, but looked and to some extent felt 16; like she hadn’t matured a day beyond the age she discovered the “oddness,” she sensed about herself, had a name.

I couldn’t tell her what I had suffered. It was a guarded secret for me.

Growing up on this Caribbean island meant that society was not accepting of same sex unions. I felt like I had to be “straight” in order to fit in or to be accepted.

De day afta de Red Muddah shut-up shap

Darkness de covah de rims ah Guyana

Castin de plague ah shadows

Into de souls ah de eye-suh-late.

We watched the queens of New Kingston in the gayest gully on earth caged birds with ambitions to soar grounded by clipped wings

But until gays are free,

My happiness will never be enough for me

da bishop daughta in foreign

marrit to woman wit no babies?