BECAUSE THEY WERE ~ From One Heart to the LGBT Community

I won't say that I know exactly how you feel.
I can't.
I have not walked through the world as an openly gay, or bi, or trans person.

I know that there are more identities than these.
I am still learning.
And I see why the closet must feel so incredibly safe.

I have never been loathed for whom I have loved.

But I feel you.  Deeply.

Because I understand another kind of hate.
A hate that multiplies like spores breeding on irrational air.
The hatred of my natural state.
The venom hurled at who and what I am.

Not gay.  But black.

The outsider more times than I can count.
Othered and excluded.
Diminished and devalued.
Made to feel that if I could just shed how I was born,
Then I'd be 100% of a person.

When you were little, did you pray to be straight
As much as I prayed to be white?

I understand that part.

Or did you stand at a crossroads
Bearing both worlds
Pigment and orientation, one on each shoulder

The weight of it, the weight of it.
I cannot imagine the whole of it.
But I understand the half.

I know what is to live with the knowledge.
Each and every day.
The knowledge that there are people right now
Doing their laundry or making their lunch.
Who hate you.

Hate enough to kill you.

Who would mow you down
As easily as they mow their lawns.
And end you.
It is a surreal thing.  A real thing.
This knowing.

Charleston did to me what Orlando has done to you.
One year ago today.
June 17, 2015.
We lost 9.  I cannot fathom 49.
Innocent people, living and loving.
Planning for the next day, week, year.
Gone.  Just gone.

For those at the crossroads... 58.

Murdered for being gay.
Murdered for being black.

I cried and cried, when I could finally cry.
The me in them so palpable.
The horror so unflappable.
The truth so ripe and close.
The refrain that plays on repeat.

People hate me for no reason.
People hate me for no reason.

I understand that part.

I cannot feel your exact hurt.
Ever.
Our stories are not the same.
But there are things I have felt, and do feel.
That are reverberations of the same sick wave.

I wish I could alleviate the searing pain
And look at each of your faces with kindness.
Saying nothing but everything.
I wish I could soothe each one of you
And kiss your hands in comfort.

You have my respect, and my embrace.
Not in spite of being LGBT
There is no tolerance here
But because you are
Because in a world which reminds me of the many ways we hate
You remind me of the many ways we love

Nothing I say can be enough.
These words seem trite as I type them.
But am rocked by the weight.
The weight of 49 vanished.
The weight of millions mourning.

The weight of those killed because they look like me.
The weight of those killed because they love like you.

Now is time for wailing.
But soon, a new time.  A new day.
Fledgling, but yours for the taking.
They can shoot, they can deride.
But they cannot snuff out pride.

I hear you.  I do.
One cannot be deaf to cries with echoes of one's own.

I see you.  I feel you.
I hold you.  I love you.

Hate wins its bloody battles.
It will not win the war.

___________


xo TT