"We were the distance.
We were the too close for comfort.
We were the never comfortable.
We were the one hour a week
Our therapists looked forward
To going to work.
That's definitely not true.
We couldn't afford therapy.
We were the lie through your teeth
Getting caught in our own bite.
We were the junkyard dog
With someone's heart in his jaw
Saying, 'Listen, I'm just really scared
To be alone at night.'
We were the meteor thinking twice.
We were the millionaire's lawn boy
Fucking a debutant in the shed.
When they told us we were terrible in bed,
We said, 'We're awesome on a tractor.'
We were the ones who looked like slackers
But we were not the slackers.
We were bringing harmonicas to yoga class
Saying, 'If I'm gonna breathe this world deep
I'm gonna get a song out of it.'
We were burning every McDonald's billboard
That said, 'Loving it.'
Every time we read a poem we were killing it.
We were trigger happy to trigger each other.
Whenever someone left we'd say,
'My father punches like those footsteps.'
But we were the spike in the punch,
The bar fight at the AA meeting.
When I started saying, 'My sober hurts,'
You started screaming, 'Let's become quicksand in reverse!'
And we were Banksy on an overpass in New Orleans
Spray-painting porch lights on the hurricane.
We were welcome mats for the un-forgiven.
We never sold our windpipes to make a living.
We were the letters sent to the wrong address,
But opened anyway.
We opened anyway.
We were the bearded women.
We were the genderqueers with Saran Wrap binders.
My mother said, 'You've left me with nothing
To wrap the casserole with.'
But we were learning to hear 'I love you'
In everything our mothers said
Because we were the see-through.
We were the glass doors everyone kept running into,
Trying to learn how to shatter without hurting someone.
We were the gay boy scouts
Telling their fathers they're gonna quit.
We were the closet with nothing in it.
We brought our umbilical chords to show and tell.
You stopped trying to make friends
By giving away the sweets in your lunchbox.
We started holding stethoscopes
To our enemies' heartbeats.
We started listening
While we were bleeding
On the hotel bed sheets.
We were the crime scenes
Our loves swallowed chalk for.
Sometimes we were the wars we didn't believe in.
But we were saying, 'Bin Laden should have had a trial.'
We were saying, 'Bush should have had a trial.'
We were conviction.
We were a black woman saying, 'Andrea Gibson,
Do you have any idea how much privilege it takes to
Think it's cool to dress poor?'
We were the day the white kids learned why
They were not the ones getting followed
Around the store.
We were the heartbreak of truth.
We were the willing to break even more.
We were the Fahrenheit
Of a monkey wrench in a heart valve.
We were the plasma that paid the rent.
We were the word 'cuddle' carved
Into the wall of a prison cell.
We were the 'I've got your back'
Kiss and tell photograph
On a coffee table in a house
Full of crushed glass
From every ship in a bottle
We couldn't stand not to break out"