PART 1: hair is a lion a halo of sunshine surrounding summer induced freckles against cinnamon skin pig nose rose lips she says she has body of a bean she says with a giggle glowing in her speckled cheeks
PART 2: She is burgundy cinnamon candles flickering in the dark underneath my fingertips she is warm a comfortable brown but you can’t forget she is a flame wildly red and she can spread like a forest fire but don’t be afraid of burgundy because it’s funny to think that the same thing that can burn every single sign of life in sight is the same thing that keeps us warm at night and it is so easy to forget she is what keeps the sun alive and i think it’s so funny that she’s fallen for the sea and he is sea green and he has broken hearts littering his sleeves like foam on a sea shore crashing waves will drown girls but
girls will still drown for him but lately lately i’ve learned that you can’t blame the sea for the way the moon pulls it lately i’m learning to forgive the ocean PART 3: the girl you used to be in love with now turned slightly sour with another year, rain and snow and stormy skies reads her ex’s poetry and says “i don’t know what this one means” and you do, and don’t say anything and you don’t quite know why but, you spend a lot of your time not saying things around her PART 4: miss how i used to see her i miss the sweet smell of rose colored glasses and they may have bumped my eyelashes and made my nose sweaty, but now being with her is like being around an old memory
— aviva
I. Pont de Solférino When I want someone, my gaze chars against his flatnesses, his edges. Jaw lines and straight shooting. But her brow furrows in waves; she thinks I look distrusting as my gaze chars against her curves, fiery even in rain. The scorched penumbra of uncertainty. The crystal arc of the soprano. I duck under my umbrella to blush. On a bridge of love-locks she scribbles hate-notes to a woman she’s still in love with. Scrawled along the railing is a stranger’s advice: he says that falling off this bridge would hurt less than it does to fall in love. I photograph a lock that pairs a name with happiness, instead of with another, and wish I could throw my camera, like that key, into the Seine.
II. Rosebush Her daisy dress is open to the waist, and lace thigh-highs frame that silk-fur triangle she so likes to sketch. Slick and staccato, the notes rise and fall as I watch her feline face contort. The vibrato rocks her but I do not take my finger off the key; I let the note linger, and will not let her rest. She weeps and loses count after the first six shake her. Bite me, I say, and she does what I tell her to. She is fresh-minted, a dagger of a woman, and I have long-since left my mark on her neck
and near her nipples. The next morning we go out in search of pancakes. I clumsily pluck a rose off a bush and hand it to her; a stranger smiles at our clasped hands. Suddenly hers are at her sides and there’s a flower on the ground.
III. Stars of Davida Deep violet hickeys will bedeck the breast of my bride. She’ll blush in her backless dress, nipples ripe for suckling. The vibrato of restraint will show in her too-slow steps towards me, and my dÊcolletage will tremble as I offer one sharp stomp to the napkin-wrapped champagne glass shattering tradition even as I relish it.
A Blanket of Guilt Looking at me from the outside, many people would think I am a straight man. They are wrong. I’m a trans woman, and a lesbian at that. This self-knowledge is fairly recent for me, but it hasn’t meant anything new for me. I’ve lived the idea of one day being murdered by someone who took offense to my existence ever since I learned what antisemitism is, and I’ve always felt guilty about the way I look at women; just because now it’s not technically the male gaze, most people won’t know that, and I’m still adjusting to thinking of myself as female. I feel a need to be accepted by other women as one myself, but far too much of my behavior is what I was taught to do as a man, and only men are taught how to be attracted to women. I only know how to love a woman like a man does, hunting and using and discarding. The thought of acting that way makes sick whenever I have it. Still, there’s nothing else for me to go on. And of course the only woman I know I’ve had romantic feelings for is currently dating one of my best friends, so I’ve gotta be guilty about that too. I live in the two shadows of fear and guilt. I might suffer or die for my existence, and each interaction with another woman is a tightrope act over a pit of spikes made of self-loathing. Still, I cannot pretend I am not a lesbian. Denying the sort of person I am has only ever hurt me before. Rachel
Sefa
Is This How Samson Felt? Dinah bat Bracha
i am infinite cosmic bodies, galaxies and black holes. i am a hundred steel tons drilling fast into the ground. i am crashing tectonic plates and the shake of the sky. i have the power to press mountains into rubble with my ring finger alone. yet your eyelashes have more of a hold on me than a million steel wires. your sighs carry me more than a tornado. the flush of your cheek offers me more warmth than forest fires. i am mighty in reach and delighted by my own strength. and you have made me weak. and you have made me whole.
Exodus I don’t understand how you can say Jewish women are beautiful When you always made me feel so ugly You say Jewish women are beautiful But you wouldn’t let me leave your side for half a year And my synagogue didn’t recognize me When I came back You can’t just say Jewish women are beautiful When you drove me away from my people And my faith And my god You can’t say Jewish women are beautiful When I only existed for you anyway When I felt so worthless around you When I saw no escape from you
(I still don’t) You say Jewish women are beautiful But you are my own personal Pharaoh And I am still escaping Egypt I am still in Exodus You always described yourself as an ocean So maybe it’s time I raised my staff and parted the sea And escaped from you (I always felt I was a little like Moses anyway)
He who weakened It’s funny how much I loved the story of Samson Because you were Delilah (he who weakened) And my hair still hasn’t grown back You knew that God had plans for me You knew that God made me strong You kept asking for the source of my strength I should have known
Sun and moon How does this keep happening to the people I love? I just want to protect people From the cycle of abuse But this whole earth spins on an axis of abuse The stars all shine with trauma Who knew that this would happen again? That Sirius would outshine the moon? That Sirius would break into a million pieces? Back to dust he returns You can’t warn people until it’s too late Because they always want to take their own advice Find their own way It is nighttime and I’m at the bridge on the river-walk I haven’t been here since my hallucinations were bad And my paranoia was worse And I threw rocks named after you into the waves
But now I am watching them absorb the starlight Who knew that this would happen again? That Orion could strangle the sun? Ursa Major watched, and he liked it too He doesn’t regret choking out the sunlight Even though now he can no longer say “I love you to the moon and back.” What’s a moon without a sun? What would happen if all the other stars in the sky Disappeared?
Yom Kippur I’m stuck in a school that does not love me back With exes who do not love me back And hospitals that do not want me back And pills that will not bring me back And I would wreck my liver just to feel something If they’d manipulate me just to get something I’d crash and burn and I’d break my wings God, I just want to feel something It is a sin to remind a ba’al teshuvah of their past But I haven’t repented yet I can’t trust myself with forgiveness
Diaspora “What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple?” A girl across the room is trying to tell a joke And I already know it’s not funny “The Holocaust.” It seems like everyone is laughing at me and not at her. It stings. It burns like the millions of oven jokes she told too. I am a Jew. I don’t know Ladino and I only know enough Hebrew To wake up in the night calling for God – But it’s who I am. I am reaching for something – A homeland, a synagogue, a language, a culture To prove to myself I really belong here. I know so many trying to reconnect with their culture. They never told me it would hurt so much, That the minute I proclaim who I am
There would be people who want me dead. Antisemitism didn’t start with Hitler and it didn’t end there either – We have been running since the beginning of time. I am having a panic attack at shul, I am shaking and I can’t say these prayers right I am reaching for something – An end, an end to this constant diaspora My family came from Germany My family came from Italy My family came from the Caucasus But my family has no homeland Our blood sings songs of, “Sh’ma, Yisrael,” And other diasporic sorrows But we will never know who we really are. I am reaching for something – A prayer, a song, a story In a language I don’t understand
To call my home.
Friends You’re not telling your friends you love them, still Right? I was so afraid of what you were going to do next It’s cheating, you’d say You’re a cheater “I am.” I flinched, even though you weren’t in the room You’ve broken my heart, you said “I love my friends But I love you, too.” You would tell me it’s either one or the other I never liked ultimatums, not after you We can salvage this, you said You want to be exclusive, right? I nodded You told me I couldn’t talk to my friends again Or my family, again
You knew the source of my strength and you took it away from me You knew that I loved my friends I loved to talk I loved to love You knew the source of my strength You cut off my hair and you left me to die But I will never forget how when we broke up My friends all stood by me I’m coming to your house, you said I’m not leaving until we get back together “Call us if he does,” they responded “And we will surround you and scream ‘We love you’. He will surely leave.” — Avery H.
murtogg.tumblr.com
כפרה עלייך they spoke to me about g-d as if they knew her. they told me he would never allow queers to exist, that bisexuals were greedy and disgusting, that there were no words sour enough to express their revulsion.
any love i expressed for a girl was treated as a joke. any symptoms of being earnest met with a closed fist, an open palm to the cheeks. ending with me struggling to keep my voice steady as i call someone for a ride home on someone else’s phone.
i know now they are wrong, they must be. what i feel for her in my soul, must be the fine craftsmanship of g-d; no one and nothing else could create something so beautiful, so divine.
so i paint our nails the night she arrives mine revenge, hers undaunted and watch the polish shine as she turns her fingers over in the light of the candles. slowly, she shows me how to stand, unfaltering.
– Dani English
