Queer Future:

I open my eyes as hands drag me out,

Ashes around me rise up

As the roots entwined in my skin

Break out,

We have broken out from

Under the boot that has held us down,

The system of disfunction,

Profit put before lives,

Eyes glide against the landscape

And yes, now we can begin again.

A new world, a new future can be built.

Norms smashed through

Like all these closet doors,

Life can be beautiful,

Life will be freeing,

Where people’s lives are valued

More than bodies on a production line.

Where gender is felt in colours

More than just blue and pink.

Of gold, of green, of red.

Where bedsheets aren’t sewn

In threads of shame,

And heads aren’t lying on pillowcases

Wishing, hoping, wanting to be someone else

Someone deemed as ‘normal’,

Hands cusped tight as voices whisper in melancholic prayer,

Someone they want, someone that pleases them.

Guilt taught from a young age

From pews that spew hate

Masqueraded as love.

Lives taken for granted

Like my body was taken from the ground,

And I can feel it in my aching bones

The turning tides, the sea is rising

With every foot that marches forward,

We have done this before.

We have said yes twice before.

We have shouted for control over our own lives,

Our own bodies.

We have fought back,

Pulled, pushed, dragged,

Those still living with an outdated view

About who should have a say

In what we do with our bodies.

We have done this before

And we will do it again

And again and again and again

Until each closet door swings open without fear,

Without prejudice or discrimination

Until everyone can be pulled up

From the roots that hold us down.