queer bones by Julia Perch
after the election I looked inside myself to see what was rotten
but I couldn’t bear it and looked outside myself instead.
met up with my mom and I said I’m scared I’m scared and she said
we survived Nixon we survived Reagan we will survive this.
she thinks I am worried about gay rights
everyone thinks queers are worried about gay rights
my queerness, like my whiteness, has always been entitled to me
and so I am not thinking about gay marriage I am thinking about queer safety,
queer sanity, queer autonomy, queer vulnerability, queer bones,
the safety and the protection of what lives inside of us, the good that is there,
and the courage to see the rotten, let it skim to the surface, sit with the rotten for a while.
my mom and I talk immigration rights and she uses the word “illegal”
and I see the rotten oh god here it is, I see my racist grandfather whose memory I buried alongside his rotten soul last year,
may he rest in dirt,
I use the word undocumented and she responds with a half shrug, shifts her bag on her shoulder,
the same white discomfort I inherited, that trash-truth-core of myself that lives inside my bones along with the good, both are there,
and I fall backwards to eight years ago when my nice liberal mom showed me she was a closeted homophobe,
didn’t want me to be gay, wanted me to have an easier life,
and it’s eight years later and does she see now how this is the only life I can live?
how if I had to live a different life I couldn’t live?
how the queerness of my soul informs everything?
how no life is easy, but mine is among the easiest? she has to see that.
she would call my girlfriend my friend, my friend, my friend, and I would say girlfriend, and she would say friend,
and I say undocumented, and she says illegal,
but weren’t we the illegal ones, my mom’s mom and her mom fleeing Russia with jewels sewn into coats,
valuables tucked away, adventure and fear in their hearts?
aren’t we the illegal ones?
we inherit the bones of our ancestors, the ones on the fault lines,
lines some of us crossed long ago,
lines that many are still trying to cross.
tonight, let us try to connect our sad queer souls to grant us protection and peace.
tonight, let us try to see the good in each other, let it fill us up, let it overtake the sad, the rotten, the fearful.
the rotten will still be there when we’re ready to face it.
Julia Perch is a queer femme living in West Philadelphia. By day, she is a medical editor. By night, she writes personal essays, runs a really low-key poetry vlog, and hangs out with her cats and partner. Her work has been published in Philadelphia Stories, Word Riot, bedfellows, Prick of the Spindle, and Steadfast Magazine.
