We Will

Photo: Roberto Faira

We will bend. Our bodies no longer able to contain the fullness of who we are, the beauty of all our parts. The things that make us unique, make us lively, make us human. We will contort ourselves for the new world we seek to build. We no longer will fit in with the old molds, old thinking, old patterns, because we finally have an opportunity to create something new. When we bend, it will not be to fit in the tight crawl spaces, the alleys, the hideaways our oppressors would love to see us in. When we bend, it will be to become something better than we could have ever imagined.

We will break. Many times, over and over, as is due process when we are embracing something new since the old is no longer. We will lose pieces of us, of each other, of those we love. Maybe to death, maybe to sickness, maybe to something catastrophic, but if we are still here so are they. They live in us. We smash the old shells of our old selves to make room for the butterflies we are finally becoming. We obliterate the old skins that now feel too tight of a fit. We will become new through this breaking. We shed our old selves not to forget or shame the old us, because it took being them then, to become us now. People that revel in the aftermath of a great storm, of a great shattering because we know we are built to become better once we have a glimpse of the other side.

We will heal after the loss, the grief, the struggle of all we have had to endure to become we who are now. We will shed many tears, not all at once, sometimes randomly seemingly without cause. But we know the cause. Our tears, our hurt, our suffering is a part of us too. The wounds can be healed, but they will leave scars. We will not look at these scars with disdain, disgust, or disappointment, but with reverence. They are a reminder that the deepest cuts can still mend. We are able to feel, to hurt, and break many times and heal as many times as we want to. For as long as we want to. For as long as want to work at it.

We will win and have already won because we decided to not fight this battle alone. When we got defeated, beaten, bruised, we got back up and continued to fight. When our homes were burned, our land stolen, our culture shamed, our bodies misgendered, our language corrupted, our people ‘genocided’, our ancestors lynched, our love ruled, our queerness rejected, we continued to live, boldly, loudly, and proudly. Not in fear of those who designed, inflict, and incite this violence because we know their attempts to erase us are proof of their own fear. They wish to erase us because we are reminders of who and what they are too scared to embrace and too dishonest to face. They are confined to hetero-norms, systems, ideals, things they made in hopes we would assimilate. We hold onto our radical hearts, mind, bodies, and politics because that is what makes us who we are. A people who have won, who will continue to conquer their oppressors, who will build a better world for each other. In our struggles to dismantle this empire and every offshoot of it that lives within us, we will bend, we will break, we will heal and we will win.