Anti-Trans Legislation at What Feels Like the End of the World
Heart heavy as a soaked sponge, I am so tired.
Every day, more threats against people like me,
by people unlike me. People like me, but don’t like me.
And fires in the scrub and neighborhoods of LA.
Where I live, La Niña has covered us in a blanket
of snow so deep, I can only look at it.
So deep, I cannot cross over, nor go round.
Fire season months away, unmitigated by snow.
People like me, one lick in the wild flames,
one drop in the collective gallons of our human
blood. People like me, sparking like atoms,
tiniest form of matter. We matter. We matter.
Subhaga Crystal Bacon is the author of five collections of poetry, including A Brief History of My Sex Life, forthcoming from Lily Poetry Review Books, and the Lambda Literary Award finalist Transitory, from BOA Editions (2023). A Queer elder, they live in rural Washington on unceded Methow land.
Read other Letters to America online or in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, published in partnership with Trinity University Press.
Header photo by jenyateua, courtesy Adobe Stock.
