tombstone love

come back home.

[uprootedgods]

HOMETOWN // an escapril prompt, cleaned up.

(poem transcript under the cut!)

[”Hi. It’s your Appa. Did you get my last text? 

Crescendo of violins cracking against each other. The flowers on the table are wilted, from my last trip to the grocery store with the blinding, stark white lights. As a reassurance, a remedy, a balm against my aching chest, the lights of the apartment are switched off. Strange city. Where are all the people? All the life? The fridge opens to overpriced mushrooms. All the walking through empty alleys and still I do not yield the fifty percent discount stores where the signs hang half-broken from the ceiling, flickering when you step past them, hands drifting along the grimy tiling. Oh, all I want to do is go back. Plastic glove wearing immigrants at the counter, peeking up from underneath their baseball caps. An exchange without words, just in the way I heft my bags up to the counter and the weight of everything I need giving through. The hazy memory of a carrot rolling across the floor. Thud. Blood seeping from my scars. Forgot I can’t lift my arms. 

I know we weren’t the best at parenting. I’m trying, dear, I really am.

Loud sounds shudder through me. So the fridge stays empty, and that’s alright. You learn to make do with pan scraps and the hollowness of cheekbones. I try to save the flowers, because I can never accept something as dead. The heart is dead. So is the name. Foreign city, where is your life? Foreign city, where is the colour splashed against your walls? Foreign city, why do you make me feel like a bell could be rung through me and I would still be numb? I want to ask you: where are your beaches? Where are the people rushing past each other, never knowing that the other one has just as much of a wilted-flower-life as themselves? Where are the motorbikes so loud they reverberate through my chest like tidal waves? A roundabout way of saying: back in my hometown, the fridge would be full. Neighbours knocking down my door to make me soup. Doesn’t matter, in the end, what kind of scars bleed across my chest. New vase full of fresh flowers.

Call me back, please. I can’t go my whole life wracked with guilt. 

Setting the table the way my mother used to do it. It doesn’t come off the same way, but I’ve learned to live with it. I learned to cook from her, rolling chapathis into the late night, which is to say: making food for one means making food for the next three days. Old city, will you direct me to your roots? Old city, will you let yourself be watered by my hand, even though my hand is bloody and crusted and not the same as it was before? Old city, when I return, will you take me in as a wilted flower in an old vase, dirty water? Old city, keep me nourished. Keep my fridge full. Keep the scars healed and let them never bleed again. Old city, teach me how to make tea the way my mother does it so when I close my eyes, I can pretend I am young and in your cursed embrace. Teach me your lullabies so I can sing them to myself at night and pretend my mother is at my side, murmuring them to me. Oh, old city, teach me the tender love of letting people pass through you without expecting them to return.

It’s Amma. When are you coming back home?”]

[uprootedgods]

MY BOYHOOD WAS STOLEN

How long will I have to wait, still? We take it minute by minute but every minute is spent staring at the mirror, wondering how we could reconstruct our jawlines. I want to be tender like a wound, you know, but I’ve already healed many times over, and the glass becomes sharper underneath the yellow light of the bathroom. I’ve never put bandages around my chest, but I have run while compressing it. I think I’ve stopped caring.

Hey, God! Lean down a little so I can punch you; see: you made me smaller than I needed to be. Sure, the jokes are funny and I laugh, but the glass grows sharper, you know? I try to touch my skin but my fingers go straight through it. My laughs are all hollow like skeleton bones and the knock against a door you don’t want opened. I like walking down hills but my feet sink right into the path. Guess I’ll never be real.

The worst thing about dying is dying slowly. I’d rather the heart stop completely than fade out. You know, every day a little piece of me returns to the earth and everything beyond it, and I let it do that. The body doesn’t feel good, but I get used to it. Listen, the body isn’t a car to crash. You hold onto the ride as much as you can, you sit in the passenger seat with your seatbelt buckled tightly while a person you don’t know cruises the car down the highway at two hundred kilometres per hour. But hey, at least you can put on your music!

The thing is, I’m not broken. I’m rebuilding slowly, like a tower of Jenga, able to tip over any moment but putting my trust in the hands of people who will try their best to keep it safe. I look in the mirror and a strange urge to punch it rises up inside me, but I remind myself to save my punches for God. When I stop to take pictures of the sunset with the most beautiful girl in the world, isn’t that healing? And when I watch dumb movies while holding hands with my best friend, isn’t that love? And when I walk down the hill with the best things that happened to me this year, isn’t that happiness? And when we lift our drinks up to the skies and curse the ones who put us here, isn’t that reclaiming something, anyway?

Listen, I think the skies are better where I only walk around with one shadow. The horizon is more stunning. Loving somebody is hard when you don’t really like yourself, but I try. The thing about me loving is that I fall too fast. I tell my friends I love them every single day. I focus on the hollowness of the collarbones and the smile that outshines the sun of people I cannot have, of people who don’t love me back. My entire foundation is built on loving. I wish I could be tender like a wound, but I’ve already healed many times over. But healing many times over equals getting hurt many times over, and fuck, if I don’t know a thing about hurt.

Happiness was stolen right out of my hands. The reason I want to punch God is because they made me just a little shorter, my chest just a little bigger, my jawline just a little duller. I try to have everything, but sometimes you have to be satisfied with your phone not capturing the sunset properly and people not saying the right name. It’s the thought that counts.

So I suppose natural happiness was taken away from me. Years of my life were stolen from me, given to a person who doesn’t exist, who I’ve already shot dead and buried in an unmarked grave. People tell me I’m steady and quiet, that I’m kind and give good advice. The thing is, most times I stare at the sunset and want more. I want to finally be happy, I want to scream my name from the hills and tell people that this is who I am! This is me! But there are times where I stare at the sunset and a certain kind of happiness—one I’ve wrestled out of God’s hands—rises up in me.

I’m strong enough to do this. My boyhood was stolen, all right, and I still stare at the mirror and try to change all the things I don’t like about myself, but skipping down hills as the sun is setting is a feeling I want to fester deep in my bones. I don’t know where home is, but I’ll figure it out.

The sun will rise tomorrow morning. And it will hurt, but it will be alright.

[uprootedgods]

MY BOYHOOD WAS STOLEN

How long will I have to wait, still? We take it minute by minute but every minute is spent staring at the mirror, wondering how we could reconstruct our jawlines. I want to be tender like a wound, you know, but I’ve already healed many times over, and the glass becomes sharper underneath the yellow light of the bathroom. I’ve never put bandages around my chest, but I have run while compressing it. I think I’ve stopped caring.

Hey, God! Lean down a little so I can punch you; see: you made me smaller than I needed to be. Sure, the jokes are funny and I laugh, but the glass grows sharper, you know? I try to touch my skin but my fingers go straight through it. My laughs are all hollow like skeleton bones and the knock against a door you don’t want opened. I like walking down hills but my feet sink right into the path. Guess I’ll never be real.

The worst thing about dying is dying slowly. I’d rather the heart stop completely than fade out. You know, every day a little piece of me returns to the earth and everything beyond it, and I let it do that. The body doesn’t feel good, but I get used to it. Listen, the body isn’t a car to crash. You hold onto the ride as much as you can, you sit in the passenger seat with your seatbelt buckled tightly while a person you don’t know cruises the car down the highway at two hundred kilometres per hour. But hey, at least you can put on your music!

The thing is, I’m not broken. I’m rebuilding slowly, like a tower of Jenga, able to tip over any moment but putting my trust in the hands of people who will try their best to keep it safe. I look in the mirror and a strange urge to punch it rises up inside me, but I remind myself to save my punches for God. When I stop to take pictures of the sunset with the most beautiful girl in the world, isn’t that healing? And when I watch dumb movies while holding hands with my best friend, isn’t that love? And when I walk down the hill with the best things that happened to me this year, isn’t that happiness? And when we lift our drinks up to the skies and curse the ones who put us here, isn’t that reclaiming something, anyway?

Listen, I think the skies are better where I only walk around with one shadow. The horizon is more stunning. Loving somebody is hard when you don’t really like yourself, but I try. The thing about me loving is that I fall too fast. I tell my friends I love them every single day. I focus on the hollowness of the collarbones and the smile that outshines the sun of people I cannot have, of people who don’t love me back. My entire foundation is built on loving. I wish I could be tender like a wound, but I’ve already healed many times over. But healing many times over equals getting hurt many times over, and fuck, if I don’t know a thing about hurt.

Happiness was stolen right out of my hands. The reason I want to punch God is because they made me just a little shorter, my chest just a little bigger, my jawline just a little duller. I try to have everything, but sometimes you have to be satisfied with your phone not capturing the sunset properly and people not saying the right name. It’s the thought that counts.

So I suppose natural happiness was taken away from me. Years of my life were stolen from me, given to a person who doesn’t exist, who I’ve already shot dead and buried in an unmarked grave. People tell me I’m steady and quiet, that I’m kind and give good advice. The thing is, most times I stare at the sunset and want more. I want to finally be happy, I want to scream my name from the hills and tell people that this is who I am! This is me! But there are times where I stare at the sunset and a certain kind of happiness—one I’ve wrestled out of God’s hands—rises up in me.

I’m strong enough to do this. My boyhood was stolen, all right, and I still stare at the mirror and try to change all the things I don’t like about myself, but skipping down hills as the sun is setting is a feeling I want to fester deep in my bones. I don’t know where home is, but I’ll figure it out.

The sun will rise tomorrow morning. And it will hurt, but it will be alright.

[uprootedgods]

DID I KNOW THE COLOUR RED BEFORE I KNEW HER?

How can I describe her? How can I do her justice? How can I talk about her to someone who has never met her, who doesn't know her?

You'd think red is the colour of violence. Blood, and anger, and all that. That's not what this is. The colour red is in her smile, how I've only seen it in pictures but I know it lights up the entire damn room, it's in her dress when she spins around, it's the love that I feel thrumming underneath my skin whenever I talk to her. That's the colour red to me. 

And maybe I can't do her justice. Maybe I can't tell you what it's like to know her. Knowing her is like knowing the sea. It's mostly calm, and it's mostly steady, but sometimes there's anger against bigotry, sometimes there is that hot red flash of anger, but it becomes steady, again. Like the waves. She comes and goes, steady. 

I don’t think I can quite describe the feeling that blooms in my red red heart when I see a notification from her, or she texts me, or she talks to me. It’s raw and it’s red and it’s warm. 

One day, I'll know what it's like to hug her. I will know what it's like to feel the colour red, its warmth, and her smile. I can't do her justice. Words cannot do her justice. 

But I'll try my best to tell you how much I love this person who's born on the same day as I am, and you'll just have to take my word for it. 

[uprootedgods]

A STILL FROM THE MAHABHARATA

When you are reborn into a human’s body, there are things that are not the same. You are not used to this body. You run your tongue over the bullet in your mouth and you feel the need to swallow it. It cannot kill you. You cannot be killed. You run your hands over Arjuna’s arrows and wonder what it’s like to die.

You are Krishna. Avatar of Vishnu. Avatar of the protector. Run your palms over your blue skin. Your body is not yours but it is yours. You are Vishnu, but you are Krishna, but you are nobody at all and everybody at once. If you protect everyone, who protects you?

Arjuna hesitates before the battle. He does not want to spill his own blood. You have never known family. You have two brothers who have their own demons. Shiva lives in a graveyard and Brahma is haunted by his own creation. You do not know what it is like to hold your life in your hands and rip it apart. You tell him to fight. He does.

Run your hands over your never ending expanse of blue skin, making sure it’s there, making sure it’s real, trembling underneath the banyan tree in the forest because this body is not yours. Run your hands over this body you have now memorised, this body that you were born into but yet have never known. Just because you know something does not mean it is yours. Try to find a place where he has not touched you. You can’t.

Arjuna kisses you fiercely and then charges into battle and for the first time you are faced with the prospect of mortality because if he dies, you die, and your body has never been yours, but you know his like you’ve never known anything and you’ve known his name like you’ve never known yours and you would carve his name into your blue blue skin as if it was yours to be answered to.

Your names are the same, bullets curled around tongues, equally as deadly. You have never known anything that is yours except him. Except his body. Except his name. You may not know your body but you know his. Lay your feet up on the chariot and hold his hand until you die, or he dies, or somebody dies.

There’s only one way this will end. One day you will go back, and one day he will die. There is no other way written for you and him.

You kiss him and you swear on your brothers, that this will not end in a tragedy. But it will, like it always does, and that’s the saddest part of this tale.

[uprootedgods]

BEING TRANS: A POEM IN FIVE ACTS

ACT ONE

It’s a gut feeling and you want to ignore it. You want to smother it inside your very own bones, you want to choke yourself on your own blood and make sure nobody knows what you feel. You have blood in your mouth and you curl your hands up into fists.

Fuck this, you say with feeling. The plants grow themselves out of the blood in your mouth, like hyenas rearing their heads after the body of an animal has been devoured. They twist themselves around you.

You’re a carcass, waiting to be ravaged. This is wrong but this is right, and as right as it is, you have to keep your fucking mouth shut. A slap across the face. Keep your fucking mouth shut. Hide everything you are from everyone else. Hide or die, hide or die, hide or die. The consequences your parents hold above your head hang heavily over you. Hide or be ripped away, hide or be ripped apart, hide or be ripped. Away, apart, it doesn’t matter.

You hide away in too large t-shirts and sit in the corner of your room. Fuck this, you say, tiredly. Let the hyenas devour the rest of you. Hide or be ripped apart, hide or die, you’d rather let someone kill you than live like this.

ACT TWO

You want to cry. Every second of every day, you want to cry. You want to be proud but you just end up crying. Day in and day out, the hyenas follow you into the sunset. If it’s not abuse here, it’s abuse there. If it’s not abuse there, it’s abuse here. Nobody wants to call you by your name. Nobody wants to call you. Nobody wants you.

This isn’t what life is like. You know this. You know what life tastes like. You have felt the dirt between your fingers; you have planted happiness in your back garden with your mother – with your mother. Your mother who loves a part of you that is long gone, that is long dead. Your mother, who calls you the name that she gave you at birth.

Sometimes you think she loves your name more than she does you.

Forget her. Forget this. You look at the sunset and you know that life is better than this. You know what it was like. You forget quickly but you remember singing songs with your friends in the hills. That’s what life is supposed to be like.

Not this. Not wanting to rip your heart out every day and feed it to the hyenas, just so you can feel like it’s worth something, at least. That it’s useful to someone, at least. Your heart is two sizes too big because you keep forgiving everybody. You keep hiding things and forgiving and letting people stomp all over you like a herd of gazelles. Lay down. Lay down. Lay down.

Lay down and die, says your brain, but that’s not what you’re going to do. You’ll live out of spite, if you have to. Live out of pain. Live out of the bitterness. Live knowing that your mother will call you by the name you don’t want to be called by until the day she dies.

It’s better to die than to live a lie, right?

The only reason I don’t kill myself is because I know what name they’ll put on the tombstone.

ACT THREE

You’ve made friends with the hyenas, now. A little bit of blood in exchange for a little bit of feeling useful. You shake hands. Hugging is the next step, you suppose, but their fur is too matted with the remnants of your own blood. So you let it go. It doesn’t matter if you shake hands or hug the hyenas. They’re still hyenas.

This is it, right? This is how it’s going to be. Your life expectancy is small, people throw slurs at you in the hallway, you can’t say anything about anything and that’s just how it is, right? You shrug everything off with a smile. Bloody knuckles, split lips, who cares? You can’t fight back so you just get beat up. You can use your words but that won’t get you anywhere. You try to throw a few punches in but you’re always inferior. This is what it’s like. You’ve never known any different.

Punk rock leather jacket and fuck-all attitude, right? You figure if you don’t wanna be a living activist stereotype with button downs and dyed hair, you’ll go the other extreme. Why focus on anything when you’re gonna die early, anyway?

It isn’t any better at home. Ignore everything. Your mother gets out of the car and makes a comment or two about the rainbow news. You stuff your hands into the too small pockets of your jacket and shut the fuck up, keep your mouth closed. Ain’t nobody care what you gotta say, anyway.

You’re not punk rock. You’re not someone who doesn’t have feelings. You’re someone who has too many feelings, like they’re all going to tumble out of your mouth and burst out.

But this is just how it is, right?

ACT FOUR

This is what you are and you can’t change it. You don’t even know if you want to change it anymore. You’ve lived too long with the hyenas, so long that you’d miss their laugh if they were gone. Who the fuck said hyenas were bad, anyway?

The realisation doesn’t whack you in the face. It creeps up, slowly, softly, but surely. And you realise that you can’t change it. You can’t. Try all you want. You just gotta live with this; you just gotta be this forever, fuck everything else.

This ain’t the life, you know that. You gotta laugh with the hyenas. They’re your friends now. They’re your friends and you know how to hug them, now. They aren’t bad, just resourceful. This ain’t the life. You gotta figure it out. You gotta change something, do something. Take off that punk rock leather jacket. It’s too big for you anyway.

trans heroes, you search up into Google. Trans heroes. Names like Marsha P. Johnson, like Alan L. Hart pop up. Trans heroes, trans heroes, trans heroes. Kids on the internet say their names with pride; remember everything there is to know of their history. Once upon a time, you thought you’d die forgotten and alone, surrounded by only the hyenas. Now, you’re not so sure.

They didn’t want to be heroes. They just wanted to be themselves. They just did what they wanted to do, did what was right. What’s right, anyway? What the world tells you to do? Or what your heart tells you?

You want to be a hero. Or someone. A hero, or a god, or a human, or just someone is fine, as long as some kid remembers you. As long as some kid says your name, your tangible, actual, real name with pride. As long as you can look up trans heroes into Google and see your name there, even if you don’t do anything great. Every trans person is a hero.

(The hyenas howl in agreement.)

Fuck being a hero. You want to be you. And that, in itself, is pretty fucking revolutionary.

ACT FIVE

This is it.

You swear too much and you wear the trans flag on your skin. You like kids and you want to have some of your own one day. Your mother is still in love with the name she gave you at birth, and that’s how it is.

Pride, right? Be proud, be proud, be proud. Sometimes you wake up and you suck at pride. Sometimes you wake up and you suck at loving yourself, at watering your cactus, at saying hi to the hyenas that don’t devour you for lunch anymore. They haven’t been hungry in ages.

Sometimes you’re bad at doing things. That’s fine. That’s how it is. Sometimes you’re tired and you just want to put on that fucking leather jacket again and lose yourself in times that were worse. But fuck it.

Fuck this, you say, and you mean it.

Goodbye, bloody knuckles. Goodbye, leather jacket. Goodbye, people who threw slurs at you. Goodbye, sitting in the corner at 3 AM, begging to die, begging to change, just begging and begging and begging. This is what being trans looks like. It’s pain and it’s loneliness and it’s darkness and sometimes it really, really sucks.

But it’s also making friends with the hyenas. It’s the hyenas retreating to their rocks and learning that your body is your own and this is the body you have. It’s the realisation that this is it. This is you. You know you better than anyone else and this is you. This is how it is! You’re a hero! You’re a legend! Every step you take is one for the history books!

The bad days are still there. The good days are there, too, and they increase in number. The hyenas have always been there, too, watching and waiting throughout it all.

Goodbye, hyenas. You won’t be eating any of this body any more.