let's get poetic, baby!

Queer coding on coded queers

Coded concerning, coded contagious

Courtney and company tried quantifying

When the Web wants us wasted

But if you ask me, we lost

The moment we first spoke their binary

That's the root, babe

Thinking the way is to sway

These sickly silly cis systems

That this isn't bone-deep

I don't know about you

But I was always one,

Oh one, oh one

For rebuilding

And I know you are, too

So why not sculpt a script that sees

We're as natural as dew on grass

As shadows under the sun

As a smiling face unfiltered

(One of my greatest regrets

Is the self-censorship of my

Gangly teen features, emerging

Take an unfiltered picture of yourself today

If it's been a while)

We've always been makers and shapers

And I was never one, oh one

Oh one oh one

For binary

But maybe someday

I won't have to be

who do they think they are?

donning camo i can see right through

to the rubble behind pride flag props

we are not friends, we are not family

queerness knows no geography

never truly banished from any colony

though british laws on buggery

really tried their best

these people i see suffering,

you say to look away

just because some settler-laws

haven't been replaced?

you try rewriting legislation

when you don't know of liberation

drafting bills and mending ills

when there's not a second of stillness

and youre starving

and all thats safe to sip

is the rainwater that drip, drip, drips

onto the debris of what was once a city

"they'd have your head for being queer"

innocent people are dying, if that wasn't clear

i'm not asking for a pride parade

i want children to be okay

your homonationalist tirades

are as see-through as that goddamn camo

transparent sparing the bloodstains

which you hide poorly and in vain

I will not be your pinkwashed pawn

i am no man

i am no woman

and i might not be an enby either

i will not be your theyby, m'theydy

gentlethem, themtleman,

or whatever other strange phrase you try to shove down my throat

i do not owe you the illusion

of a typical nonbinary body

there is no such thing

i will not be forced to sing

in stereotype

and i will not be silent, either

instead, i will sing

and sigh

and soliloquize

about femininity

my sweet, supple,

tantalizing truth

i was told,

when womanhood and i parted ways

that our meetings were forbidden

to throw aside skirts,

burn bows and barrettes,

hide away my breasts

i was told

femininity

could not come with me

but i am not binary, nor trinary

i will not be your benignly boyish

neutrally androgynous ideal

femininity is my language

my lover

my light

femininity is not bound

to names, terms,

or pronouns

femininity responds to he

she

they, xe, ve, we

the skirts i wear

and how i feel about what's beneath them

have no relation

save for that

they are mine

and mine only

(unless

you ask

nicely)

my experience is not universal

it belongs to me

and my lover, femininity

do not tell me

what curves or crevices

my dysphoria should find its home in

for that is where femininity

loves me best

and plants the gentlest kisses

do not let my pain

take the centre stage

because it is not me

my gender is not pain

my gender is pleasure

my self-made femme design

i am not your woman,

i'm my own dyke

and oh, what a phrase

it melts on my tongue

sweet

and smooth

short skirts

shorter hair

if you're confused, i don't fucking care

i will not be your third gender

i will be me

in my own brand of androgyny

i weave my own iconography

the male gaze evaporates

scopophilia only remains

in a reflection

utterly

reclaimed

i am euphoric

i am whole

i am holy

My body's revelations came forth blazing

And from that moment on life was never the same

I had a face that grew foggy when makeup met its skin

And a chest on thin ice on the best of days

The word “girl” stuck in my heart like a thorn

So I bled, bled, bled.

The knowledge reduced it all to ash

And I emerged, a genderfucked phoenix

My Leo sun in full effect

My hair freshly chopped

And I learned the forbidden tongue

Of nonbinary dyke self-love

Radical nonbinary dyke self-love is stubbornness

Because boy, do people think they're hilarious

Calling myself a dyke is beating them to the punch

Can't poison me when I've coated my tongue with the stuff.

And when they try to deny my womanhood, I laugh,

Because it's been estranged for a while.

Radical nonbinary dyke self-love is standing tall

Head held high, moving in purposeful strides.

When I wear a skirt, it billows like sails on a summer breeze

And when I wear a skirt, I'm still a nonbinary dyke.

I can be pretty, I can be handsome, I can be gorgeous, I can be holy

Most importantly, though, I'm hot as hell.

Radical nonbinary dyke self-love is gentleness

Because beneath all this bravado, beneath the short skirts and shorter hair,

Is a body that's endured trauma. Some self-imposed, sure,

Like wrists sick of string instruments and a jaw too commonly clenched

But sometimes I run my tongue over the tooth where another's hand took a chunk out.

When you're in a queer, traumatized body, holding yourself gentle is as radical as it gets.

The body I have and the brain within

Are still relearning one another

Falling back in love all over again

Now that they speak the same language

It's one I learn as they embrace

One that makes me so glad I'm myself.

I was born a bootleg of body and brain

Fell into this world with an urge to hide my eyes

Looked up to the stars every night, wondering why they shone so shy

Spit on by the suburban streetlights

Which buzzed off-tone, a noise felt in my bones

And kept me from the warmth.

We'll be here all day if we don't skip the typical cliches:

Bright as my eyes, quick as a skip, troubled in a way no one could place.

Too loud, too soft, too strange, too much, too little, too bad

A puzzle piece crushed out of shape by a boot

I tried learning the language

but it weighed down my tongue.

I found power in presenting myself

The way I'd always yearned to.

I tore back the wrapping before it could settle, suffocate,

Sameify me.

Crushed it under my boot the way

A boot had crushed me.

The diagnosis was “not like other girls,”

An affliction amongst women who don't fit into a coffin-shaped box.

Truth is, the condition's a collage.

Pieces became clear: an inclination to the arts, brain strangeness, a pinch lesbianism.

Typical womanhood becomes a muddled memory

of floral scents and soprano sighs.

I am a message on a billboard that got painted over.

I'm an unofficial constellation, a connection unorthodox.

I'm badly-traced, I'm cobbled-together, I'm cheaply-made, I'm out of tune,

I'm a soup gone too sweet.

Fine by me.

I was never meant to be eaten anyway.