Part of Special Issue #2 – Bodies as Archives: QTBIPOC Art and Performance in Toronto
Author: Kai Cheng Thom
Content Note:
This work contains descriptions of physical and emotional violence.
*****
my boyfriend plays white guy music
your body kept the score
what the queer community should have told us
*****
1
my boyfriend plays white guy music
in the mornings when we wake up.
bearded hipsters crooning over soft guitar
weird electronic stuff and
punk dudes whooping anarchist tirades
in the barest semblance of a tune.
and he sings along badly
with the biggest sneaky grin under those
green white boy eyes
like he knows that i low-key hate it
so i wrap my arms and legs
around his smooth naked white boy body
and wrestle till i’ve got him pinned
and pummel him with kisses till
he laughingly begs
for mercy.
the dawn light slivers through his
shitty college student bedroom curtains
turning his skin pale blue, and he smiles
and says he loves me.
and shit fuck goddamn
ostie calisse tabernak
yauh mou gaau lan choh ah
i say it back.
and it doesn’t hurt me it doesn’t hurt
like the last boy’s hand
squeezing the bones in my wrist till they cracked
or listening to him howling, wolflike in the middle of the night
or breathing in his booze-soaked breath waiting
for him to cry himself to sleep. it doesn’t hurt
like the boy who told me he couldn’t sleep
without dreaming about me and sent over fifty text messages
in one hour at 2am and then ghosted without a word
it doesn’t hurt
like all the boys with asian or tranny fetishes
sneering at my body while they came inside it
doesn’t hurt
like them tearing the soft tissues of my inner body
(in the places where i still bleed) while i
didn’t say a word because i was programmed
to want to let them rape me, oh
it doesn’t hurt me to love him /or to write this poem
and i know that makes me a bad
anti-racist-feminist-trans-woman-of-colour-activist-queer
and you know i just can’t give a fuck.
what if i don’t love this white boy
cuz of internalized transmisogyny or white thirst or
any of that social justice kool-aid i drank up in college
what if?
i don’t love this white boy cuz i’m weak or cuz he’s white
what if i love him cuz he’s sweet
and dorky and kind enough to notice the look
in my eyes, and say
i’m going to stop because i think that
i’m hurting you.
what if i love him cuz my love is strong
strong enough to have survived
everything
that this world puts girls like us through
strong enough to survive
being raped and used and disposed of
strong enough to last through the lean scarred times
the violence the poison
the psychological manipulation
the abandonment
my own foolishness
strong enough to fight back
to walk away
to leave him behind
strong enough to know
that this time
i don’t have to
2
your body kept the score
and so you lie here on this tiny island in its sea
of slime, leaking
unprocessed trauma memories
and shards of poetry
that hurt as they cut through your skin
faces float in the iridescent waves, whispering
stories in a language
your brain is too burnt to remember
is there an opposite of the word disabled? oh yeah,
superhuman
that’s how you always
thought of yourself possessed
of incredible, endless strength. wonder girl, class assassin
capable of leaping over systemic barriers in a single bound
like your mother, the Invincible Woman with
a heart and skin of steel who conquered medical school
as an asian mother with two young children and
a broken back
white rich kids get to stay home sick not you she said once
as she straightened your wings and sent you to school
now fly, my pretty fly
and soar you did
like so many femmes of colour before
got the degrees, wrote the books
mediated conflicts, went to the protests
and six hour organizing meetings where white people screamed at you
for using unfeminist words
cooked meals for young queers
shrugged off all those times
a professor sexually harassed you the ten to twelve
hour workdays you didn’t get paid for supported your friends
and also some strangers through mental health crises
sent the care packages, went to the parties
had painful anal sex with your
depressed drunken boyfriend and held him while he screamed and cried
and punched the walls of his apartment
in the middle of the night
and your feelings went dead
(and oh yeah, you also changed your gender, on the side)
you thought really were the femme activist transsexual witch healer goddess
you wanted to see in the world
(hey, no big deal, it’s not like you were the only femme doing it)
and now, super girl?
your body fails you so does your brain
now you have to actually choose between making food
and answering the sixth or is it seventh
suicide support call this week (lez be honest, you take
the support call every time every time) you cry without quite
feeling sad
mangled nervous system constantly firing electrochemical signals at random
a lightning storm through the heart and spine
stop go stop go go STOP STOP STOP
you are tired
and dehydrated
all
the time
but then, maybe you were always this busted
and just didn’t notice could it be that
the amount of shit you did
was never an accurate measure of how unbroken you were
once, a queer femme poet auntie told you
here’s some advice don’t wait til you’re bleeding out
of your ass like me to take a damn break
and you laughed because you’d been shitting red
for years
O you fucked up worn out run down prophetess
you washed up dried out ground down mermaid
goddess of nothing
bodhisattva of trash
are you done yet trying to make people admire you?
look at your body
the one that is so weak you hate it
it is the only one you have
all those years you spent learning
to be the Warrior Girl
the Healer Girl
the Hunter Girl
the Hurtful Girl
the Priestess Girl
the Poet Girl
the Singer Girl
the Sister Girl
the Survivor Girl
this body is the Sick Girl
a self you have not yet learned how to love
because she refuses to disappear, to stop speaking her needs
to demand rest, and respite, and attention, and tenderness
you do not know how to love her and so
you have banished her to this tiny island
this sea of memories and slime the wreckage
of fast food wrappers, unwashed sheets your crumpled wings
you do not know how to love her and yet
she loves you still this fucked up body of yours
unconcerned with accomplishments or
the adulation of others or even
the long term survival game
she knows how to lie here just grateful
for the divine gift of breathing
naked in the arms
of an illness you do not know
how to name
3
what the queer community should have told us
1. you are perfect
& also flawed
2. you are allowed to make mistakes
& you must be accountable for them
3. accountability is not a price you pay in blood
for being human
4. justice is not violence
5. integrity & blind obedience
are not the same thing
6. no one’s truth is more important than yours
& your truth is no more important
than anyone else’s
7. just because someone is famous
does not mean that they are honest
8. your worth cannot be measured
by the number of your scars
9. you are worth saving
& you are worth holding
& you are worth teaching
& you are worth more than political theory
& you are not disposable
& you will not be thrown away
10. your body is not weapon
11. your words are not a curse
12. your intentions do matter
& so do your actions
13. we cannot live without each other
& you belong only to yourself
14. you never owe it to anyone
to hurt or degrade yourself
15. you are allowed to be angry
but you are not allowed to be cruel
16. you are not a political experiment, or symbol, or token, or tool
17. you are precious
18. you are whole
19. you are essential
20. you are a gift
21. you are loved
22. you are loved
23. you are loved
24. you are loved
25. you are loved
26. you are loved
27. you are loved
28. you are loved
29. you are loved
30. you are loved
31. you are loved
32. you are loved
33. you are loved