Stonewall & Donegal

I am exhausted with having to fight

for every splinter of my being lost in a war.

With every brick thrown at Stonewall, 

every wain who starved in Donegal, 

a piece of me mourns

people just like me caught in the thorns,

the sickening knowledge that their bodies dissolve

in the dirt for a cause without resolve.

Every rainbow flag fluttering in the sky

reminds me of a devastated child forced to lie

into the pews and confessionals of a church

threatened into a soul-search.

I wish being queer wasn’t a political statement,

I wish Evangelicals would stop urging Pride’s abatement.

I wish I wasn’t forced to be a rebel,

I wish people would stop invoking the name of the Devil

when what they truly mean is humanity despises me. 

When you abolished Nazi propaganda, did you forget that made trans people free?

My culture is not a drinking game, 

it’s not for you with ancient ancestors to claim. 

My homeland was a warzone

and I wait for an entity to atone, 

to recognize taking a fraction of our land

instead of your previous engrossing demand,

does not make a hero from a knave. 

My mother watched the soldiers fight to their grave,

and it does not soothe The Troubles

that on Good Friday came an end to the struggles. 

Everyone who came before me was a fighter,

and it is devastating that a hundred years later 

our prospects are no brighter.

Written by Sam R

edited & published by Gayatri Noor Choudhury