Memorial Day: WE ALIVE

This morning I woke up next to my longtime lover and felt giddy and grateful. Grateful for the sun. How it gives color. How it sent shimmery golden rays across her soft, freckled face as she faced me with her eyes closed and whispered, “Good morning.” I felt grateful for the deep, smiling, salt-n-molasses kiss that followed her gentle greeting. For the fruitiness of her flesh. For her nose that nuzzled my bare left breast. For my unshaven legs wrapped around her newly — rarely — shaven ones. For my ears that heard a million leaves hiss outside the window. How they wrestled each other’s green in the wild late spring wind.

I felt grateful for the oceanic eggshell paint that coats our rented bedroom walls. For the blue ribbons that drape across our ceiling. For the orange wood of our shiny floor boards and the Griffin & Sabine books that rest on top of them. I felt grateful for the Kermit-colored curl of the bushy fern that blocks our view of our full-length mirror. For the way our neighbor’s bass makes the foliage shiver.

I thought of how simple, sweet and effortless it all feels — to love my life in the early morning on Memorial Day — to love this woman I will always remember. The way I often wake up before phone calls, deadlines, meetings, invitations, unpaid bills, expectations, rejection letters, commercials, news and expert opinions, and feel tender and quiet in her arms. Found and nameless. Held and normal. Blessed and safe. Forgiven and cherished.

I thought of how all over the world, queer people are killed for openly trying to attain this plain, ancient feeling called love. How all we want is the freedom to touch each other. How Gambian President Yahya Jammeh detests us. How, recently, he has been unabashedly loud about his intention to bash and decapitate the LGBTQ folks who live in or enter the Gambia. How he once said, “Among my animals there are no lesbians, no gays or whatever. They do everything as nature ordered.”

But what is more naturally ordered than consensual, sensual touch?

I thought of Brandon Teena and Matthew Shepard. I thought of Rashawn Brazell and Sakia Gunn. I thought of all the maimed and murdered LGBTQ people whose names we don’t remember or never heard on the news. I wrote the following poem for them. For you. For us. For love.

WE ALIVE

we children of god and truth
we harbingers of sexual salvation
we brave enough to love ourselves
when senegal is trying to kill us

we with warm worn wild tongues
we with long wet seeking fingers
we with broken open hearts
when gambia says he'll chop off our heads

we with hungry deep urgent kisses
we in stilettos pumping stonewall fists
we with genders bent to meet our souls
when falls city nebraska rapes us

we with groins that want to talk dirty
we with mouths that want to come clean
we with legs that want to outrun
when laramie wyoming crushes our skulls

we who ache for your acceptance
we are not waiting for your laws
we were on our way to the accountant
when brooklyn left our torn limbs in trash bags

we with wigs and bikes and pride
we with leather and lust and poems
we with sass and guts and homegirls
when newark stabbed us in our chests

we are loving all over the world
we are hated all over the world
we are buried all over the world
we are grieving all over the world

we are praying all over the world
we are dancing all over the world
we are laughing all over the world
we are living all over the world

we alive
all over
the world
WE ALIVE.

Lenelle Moïse
www.lenellemoise.com