"We have always been here" and "Terms not accepted"

We Have Always Been Here

Don’t wave your sanitized rainbow at me.
I am a child of the ’80s.
I remember our brothers
dying in hospital beds alone,
partners kept out in waiting rooms
like strangers,
like criminals.
 
I remember so many funerals,
no family other than patrons
from the local bar.
The front-row pews, motherless;
fathers who claimed they “never had a son.”
We learned to mourn ourselves
before we even learned to drive.
 
Now you tell us to quiet down,
to be polite,
to go back in the closet
we spent decades clawing
our way out of.
You legislate our pronouns,
you police our bathrooms,
you erase our marriages
line by line, right by right.
 
But we have always been here.
 
In whispered phone calls at 3 a.m.,
in bars with no signs,
in the quiet squeeze of a hand
under restaurant tables.
 
We are not new.
We are not your experiment,
your sin,
your “phase.”
 
We carry tombstones in our pockets,
mourn those we lost,
refuse discarded by your kind.
We stand on the shoulders
of drag queens who threw bricks
so we could kiss in daylight.
 
 
So don’t tell me to be quiet.
Don’t tell me to be patient.
We have waited too long,
buried too many,
loved too hard,
to beg for scraps of rights
we already bled for.
 
I am not your rainbow decoration.
I am a storm you thought you survived.
I am a love letter you tried to burn.
I am still here,
louder than you ever imagined,
and I will not disappear.

Terms not accepted

I was not born to be small,
not carved from hush,
not designed to disappear.
 
I will not
acquiesce, or
negotiate who I am
with you.
 
I will not
barter my skin,
trade soft-spokeness
for your comfort.
 
I will not
reshape my words
to fit your blueprint.
 
I will not
shrink, smooth, hush,
or squeeze into the
closet of your design.
 
I will not
silence myself,
not for you, not for the world,
not for the ghost in the mirror
who once begged to be small.
 
I will not
unbecome to make you whole,
apologize for taking up air,
for burning too bright,
for loving too loud.
 
I will not
dim my shine, soften my blaze,
or make my survival a polite
anecdote.
 
I am
unapologetic,
unbargained,
beautifully broken,
And untouched by your demands.