When Straight People Call For Peace

For all my beautiful queer siblings.

When the straight people call for peace I have learned
That what they want is to be comforted: a piece
Of me—the comfortable part, the one
With an easy laugh who tells them the pretty lie that
“It’s no big deal, no worries, really I know it’s hard” to see
Me in the beauty and wonder of who I am,
Or that what we want is just to get along and be left
Alone and that we all really aspire
To their comfortable cookie cutter lives which
We never question,
Who tells them that they are Good People and
That their internalized assumption of my inferiority
Does not testify to their inhumanity.

When the straight people call for peace I have learned
That they want their queer children to be left
Alone
That they want me framed behind the glow
Of a monitor or tv screen, swaying, snapping, and sashaying—
“Yaaaas queen you are appreciated gurl”
They want me to werk just not in schools
Not reading the stories that tell
Frightened and forlorn children that there is a better, more
Beautiful world that could be, where they might
Finally find who they are and where their
Loves and longings are whole and healing,
Because queer kids make them uncomfortable and
They do not want to feel alienated from their offspring.

When the cis people call for peace I have learned
That what they want is for me to let them 
Fawn in sympathy or awe
At the boy girl man woman (I knew you could get there)
I am-was-am-becoming and might be
If only I would ask them 
For permission to be what who I am,
To tell them that “it's true there are only the two
Genders and I struggle also with new names
And pronouns” and never never to make
Them uncomfortable with my joy or with the details—where
The devil hides—of my transition or of the cumulative complexity 
Of our diverse community with our neopronouns and our
Maddys, and Moddy’s and Niblings, and found families
And certainly not how it makes
Me feel when it is too much trouble to see me.

When people call for peace I have learned
That what they want is oppression.