Every girl like me I know feels like she was born with an expiration date,
like there’s a number stamped on her forehead that says “26 years old”
that says “six months after the money runs out”
that says “when you can’t do this anymore”
that says “as soon as you work up the courage,”
and I’m one of the lucky ones, because that scares me,
Sometimes I think I have an immigrant’s patriotism for this world,
because it took me 20 years to decide that I wanted to live in it.
Maybe that’s what hope is.
But I don’t know how to say that the greatest poet I know and her girlfriend,
who looks so like me she nearly made my mom faint when she opened the door,
are probably not going to last another year.
So everybody told me to vote for Bernie Sanders.
It’s not enough.
Now people are saying this might be the end times,
but I want to remind them that we have already been living in them,
for as long as I can remember,
and I don’t know why it’s so hard to keep in contact with someone I don’t see,
to reach out across that burden of distance with the uncertain arms of exhaustion,
but I know why it’s hard to reassure somebody,
when all you can say is “I’m scared, too.”
How much money do you give somebody,
when money is the thing you don’t have?
For time, same question.
A trans woman I had never met came into my shop one day and pointed me out to her friend,
she said “you are my sister,”
and I said “yes, I am.”
So when I saw one of my sisters out on the street with a slice of cardboard, I brought her
a bottle of water and all the cash I had in my wallet,
because afterward I couldn’t stop crying for six hours,
and I don’t think anybody asked me why.
Maybe this is why there are so few things that feel important to me anymore.
I said “the only things people like me make are cries for help” and I got
128 reblogs.
Apparently, some people find that relatable.
A lot of people have told me that I’m the most optimistic person they know,
and I don’t tell them that I have to be,
I take it as a compliment.
The thing they don’t tell you about hope is that it’s cyclical,
it needs to be refreshed every single day,
Hope is just like every other kind of work you do on your body.
So what does a story mean, to that?
What can a poem mean, to that?
I abhor maintenance.
I don’t want to have to say anything anymore,
I want to walk to the place where all my words are done,
And build a home there.
It’s not enough.
All your pleas and all your promises, your fights and feats and failures, are not and never will be enough.
Not for us.
This world was not made for us.
So let’s build a better one.
Let’s start right here, right now, just us, not with a kiss or a fist but just
you and me
pledging to not let go
no matter what comes, deciding
even when the love is gone
that we’re not gonna let each other drown anymore.
So I want to offer my hand,
to every girl like me who needs it,
and walk with you into a place beyond these empires,
a place that doesn’t exist yet.
And that,
I hope,
is enough.
Because that’s…everything.
