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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Blame the claustrophobic mise-en-scène, but I am unstrung, my heart like Eden’s snake, once had wings. What do dreams about flying mean? I am unstrung. My heart, sweet heart, is no place for your violin, your dreams about flying, your well-mean-ing. Someone has written whore on my forehead again.
In becoming this type of speaker, I just might redeem myself for all the times I’d silently taken a punch.
I realize that this is the place where I have discovered a kind of ghetto feminism, a street social justice. This is the place where I understand the impact my actions have. Where I trust myself; where I do not question my voice or the voices of the other women here.
As a kinky, genderqueer femme with a big mouth and what you could call a rather enterprising pussy, I am accustomed to having to create my own family, my home and community, and even myself. I am proud of the keen ability queer folks have to create personal, joyful somethings out of the nothings we’re all too often offered. I don’t know, however, if I can be proud that we’ve had to make our own coffins.
Lying is the work of people who are told their truths have no value. The labour of survival is laden with myth and misunderstanding. Silence is the work of people who can’t comprehend that change is possible. (I still moonlight at all of these jobs.)
But I also believe that passively reading about or otherwise witnessing injustice injures us—it widens the disconnect. The part of us that is hurting does not heal in the dark; we must turn on the light to look at it. We must pay attention.
For me, these questions are the same as poetry. They save me. When this paragraph ends, this story is all yours.
