Cant sleep
sitting up
typing
wiping
at tears
(shed for fears)

My fingers bleed.

I don’t know who i am
I don’t know what to say.
Each day
I am different
and have to meet myself
for what feels like
the first time in a long time.

I battle with the boy
inside me
The boy within
who can’t seem to see
a way
to emerge/become
submerge/just be.

I am he
as much as i am me.

I cant sleep for the fear,
my heart murmers
and strings pull deep
and sinew
inside of me.

I ache
as i rest
body quiver,
I am displaced
disgraced,

lost and weary.

To sleep
in peace,
to be
and be free.

He cries silent
inside
within
heart and mind and body and soul
He makes me whole
complete
He is beside me.

Cloaked and daggered
he weeps tears
for all the years
he has spent
in the dark
and without
an identity
to identify.

He is me
and together we sit
awake
and silently.

In the darkness we cry.

- Jacqe Matelot

What are you thinking about gender right now?

Dear God
(for lack of a better word),

I don’t want to personify you here,

but I do speak to my toothbrush
in the second person,
so I assume that means
I can refer to you as “you”
without inferring gender or human traits.

And I don’t usually disclaim my shorthand,

but with you,
I think it’s important.

I’m in San Francisco’s mission district
at 9 on a Saturday morning
and I’ve been on a scavenger hunt
for two hours now,
looking for you.
I’m out of practice.
It’s been awhile.
I started before I woke up
with flashes of the lover I can’t have
sitting under my eyelids.
I held them there for as long as I could—
her cheeks, her hands,
the angles of his body around mine,
the sound of their voice— Continue reading »