ABOMINATION JOURNAL ENTRY

you wear hypocrisy like a badge of honor.
no longer satisfied with restitution in the afterlife?
i will not turn the other cheek.

the wake was in Nashville.

a place i hadn’t seen since my review mirror in 2020.

i didn’t call (her) back and now

i’m clinging to the voice mail (she) left like a relic of my selfish misdeeds.

i know the hopelessness of a conservative Christian family

but i don’t know what it’s like to be a closeted, Black, trans woman.

i don’t blame (her) for checking out early but it doesn’t make it any less painful.

a week before i boarded the plane, Bill passed his laws with smug indignation.

felt like he was driving another nail into (her) coffin.

i took my “mutilated” body down to the capitol building like i had two years prior.

i will mock you.

i will mock the masculinity you wielded to build a fortune in plunging shit.

i can still hear (her) voice screaming cues right out of frame.

i came home and edited the video in a manic purge and threw it online. couldn’t eat or sleep.

i miss (her).

within days of it being public, more children were dead.

not only was he “one of us,”

my mother had his signature in her yearbook.

no manifesto could justify why he thought he deserved to be an

violence met violence on the wrong battlefield

and now look what you’ve done.

at least Justin Jones was a voice of reason.

i was afraid the men who hung swazis on the highway would come after me next.

but i forgot

no one thinks dick-less men are a threat.

SIGNS