DESCRIPTION:
I am from North Carolina baseball fields on cool summer nights
I am barefoot, through tall grass, chasing fireflies' lights
I am a body too many have invited themselves to touch
I never feel like enough, but I'm told I'm too much
I am a gender fucking fat femme who doesn't know their place
I am stares and glares and taking up more than my space
I am from belts cracked across spines of girls with too much mouth
I am from cotton mills and corn fields and the still segregated south
I am begging my parents to let me wear pants on sundays
And sharing blue jeans and t-shirts with my brother on mondays
I am from nights with no food and winters with no heat
I am from prideful people who think charity is defeat
I am from preachers and missionaries and giving to the poor
I am from people who fought in a racist war
I am from poor folks who had no land,
But defended slave owners, Bibles in hand
I am from moonshine and Baptists who never drank at all
I am from front porch swings and leaf piles and hay rides in the fall
I am from protest signs and community ties
I am from chants and marches and justice cries
I am a funny working brain getting a graduate degree
I am student loan debt to one day be free
I am wanting to do more but working to the bone
I am sleeping in my car and searching for home
I am from a community that struggles with me through
I am from queers and fighters and change makers too
I am alive despite all the reasons I could not be
I am from y'all survived, surviving, survive with me
I am from radical revolution and Big Tent Revivals
I am from the intersections
I am from survival.