[evolveme]

That many of us do not love our queer selves I take as a given particularly for those of us...who grew up before there was a community that offered us some kind of loved vision of our lives. All too many of us have grown up in the shadows of contempt and horror, and made what we could through stubborn survival. Sometimes that has meant we became sad or abusive or woefully self-destructive. We have lost friends, time, a sense of meaning or purpose in what we do. We have lost little bits of ourselves we did not know were precious. Sometimes we managed to piece together a sense of self that got us through another day, one day at a time, always hopeful for a better day. That too is a mystery and a poem. Our stories are complicated, astonishing, scary, and hopeful as any parable. Made over into verse, our stories can become life-saving. Poetry is that for me, the life-saving examination of experience shaped in language - at the best gospel and revelation. What we make of our stories is what comes after, but what is shared cracks open all that came before, shifts the perspective, and alters the landscape. Sometimes that is a seared and searing revelation of the awful. Sometimes it is the heartening whisper of hope. All of it begins in the soul alone with the page shaping words to purpose, inventing a loved version of what is known...

Sympathetic magic. Bad poetry.
You do not have to despair.

- Dorothy Allison
from "Sympathetic Magic"