By Button poetry
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Charles Hines, performing “Coming Out Eulogies”.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:01
my community has a saying it gets better
00:06
we hold on to the lights at nights when
00:09
the closet gets too dark but sometimes
00:11
the hell you live in is your own skin
00:14
and you don’t even have a closet to hide
00:16
in the night of pulse my parents didn’t
00:20
know to check on me not because we sat
00:22
in the same living room watching the
00:24
same news report but because I’m not out
00:27
to them yet because I was a good gay one
00:31
who could liquify every piece of
00:33
themselves and be washed down the drain
00:34
one who could be mopped up after the
00:37
gunfire and treated as if they were
00:38
never there they didn’t know I like my
00:41
head 20 minutes away from a grade that
00:43
could as well have been my own have you
00:46
ever held back tears because you didn’t
00:48
know if they were valid my community can
00:50
tell you how breathing and suffocating
00:53
often feels the same sometimes you don’t
00:55
get the privilege of reacting can’t
00:57
afford to fall apart cuz it just might
00:59
cost you your life I think of the
01:01
victims of the post shooting and if
01:04
their eulogies also acted as their
01:06
coming-out stories wondering how the
01:08
skin someone else was born in can
01:10
translate to someone as a target you
01:12
think that by now we’d be used to hiding
01:14
gotten accustomed to locking the closet
01:17
door you think we’d never stop looking
01:19
over our shoulders because good gays
01:21
know their place because our love is
01:24
just a doormat for people who don’t
01:26
believe our reality exists it’s opening
01:28
up your ribcage so the majority has more
01:30
room people don’t see you until they
01:32
trip over your corpse searching for a
01:34
jacket to wear when you’re gay loving
01:37
yourself becomes a political statement
01:38
an act of defiance
01:41
it’s clawing fear out of your
01:42
muscle-memory and using the extra air to
01:45
breathe air you were told you don’t
01:46
deserve it’s telling yourself it gets
01:49
better
01:49
until dissociation drips into your DNA
01:52
but what else can we do when all bravery
01:55
gets you is blood on the dance floor and
01:57
leave and fear leaves you a skeleton in
02:00
the closet I guess it’s better to die at
02:02
your own hand being gay it’s finding
02:05
relief at a death at your own hand I
02:07
can’t tell you how long it took my
02:09
friends so convinced me to ever go
02:11
downtown and still
02:15
I look over my shoulder still I hold on
02:18
to my breath as if it were my very last
02:20
knowing each time it might be and
02:23
wondering if it were with the ones I
02:26
love know where to find my body and
02:28
would they be willing to claim it
02:32
[Applause]
—
This post was previously published on YouTube.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video