Storytelling

They say that storytelling is how we organize now, it’s our authentic selves arguing through our experiences for our right to exist as we are: which may be true but it does not change the fact that of all the communities I am a member of, none of them can sit thru a telling of my whole story

I agitate for abortion rights but in that community nobody wants to hear about how my second abortion also scraped away bits of my soul 

I organize for queer justice but I wrote an earlier poem with the opening line, dear gay community, when will I be allowed to belong? And performed it in a space that I curate, and was told it was too negative, that it reflected badly on the community

I am a fierce truthteller but I am not stupid enough to think that my communities will come with me through every verse of the poem that I would write for you now 

I am a woman with fire in her bones but I know it’s easier to ignite anger than it is to create change. For once, I am not here to burn your house down

At a political gala wherein I am trying to establish that I can hang with the big dogs, a woman at my table entertains with anecdotes about the trials and tribulations of her and her husband attempting to purchase the perfect vacation home. There are members of my family who are proud of their double wide, who text us pictures of the new porch Scotty just put on it. If I put that photo on Pinterest it would be called a reclaimed wood bespoke project but to Scotty it is the materials he could scrounge up from his work sites. 

On the other side of my family is four car garages, wave runners, and ample gun collections. Tobacco money, they say. Tobacco money. In Maryland in the 1800s? I guess nobody is finna speak on who collected that tobacco. I asked my great aunt what she remembered of the plantation and she told me it was just a commercial farm, and then my mom sent me out of the house to go buy more ice. 

I live now at the lakes edge, most often envisioning myself as a big grey tern, keen sighted above the waves and scooping low for a rising perch. I crawl along the breakwater at dusk, the wind reddening my face with its whip and whirl. 

I had a partner who thought it was romantic that I told my secrets to the lake. And it sounds very haunted, right, very compelling. The lake and its repetitive answers, its rhythmic affirmations. I told the lake what I could not tell my partner. 

The lake remains with me. The fire in my bones is always in me. The stories I do not tell grumble around in my skin, grubbing up against my pores so hard I am afraid I will sweat them out.