October is domestic violence awareness month, and I was asked to write a poem for a vigil for domestic and intimate partner violence tonight for a local organization (shout-out to Hopeworks, who does fantastic work!).
Do you know about the "No More" campaign? The theme of tonight's vigil was "No More." No More domestic violence.
I want to live in a world where there is no more domestic violence. No more sexual assault. No more abuse. Let's say no more.
No More
And the women say No
More.
And the men say No
More.
And the children and
elders
and my trans-sisters
and brothers
queer and straight, we
gather to grieve and
rage and hold one another because this
is how we reclaim our
lives.
We converse with silence
and the echo of doubt
until we are hollowed.
Raw hearts rarely show
the bleeding:
we arrive again with strangers
who bring
the intimacy we crave
and pocket
like poems. Some
moments
are small enough to fit
under our tongues, but we hold them like
beacons of hope. This breath breathes
power into our lungs as
we
fight to embody the
subtle whispering of ourselves and
the weights we carry.
Violence takes.
It takes air, and
energy, and blood, and
life, and all we
learned to live by.
We spend our days
learning
the motions of moving our
words from our shoes to our fists,
from our fists to our
hearts,
from our hearts to our
mouths.
We turn on our voicebox
like a
sprinkler of truth-missiles;
tie our heartstrings to
moonbeams to practice the art
of rising from darkness:
there is no
prescription or miracle.
No love letter or
checklist.
No law, or scripture, or
prayer that rights this world,
the gravitational pull
of your life to the moonbeams and the ways you rise.
The power of remembrance
and owning your sanctity.
Candlelight, and
murmurations of
the strength of
survival
together.
A poem is so small --
it is only words on a
page, spoken and then
gone; I want to be
large.
The vastness of my
embodying reaching
out so I can expand to
exist
beyond this:
take my hand and we
will make
the moon.
Let’s beam her large,
together, rising holy
into the darkness, saying:
hear me.
Believe me.
Value me.
Warrior with me.
Listen when I roar
when I whisper
when I beg and write
and pray:
No More.
