Triggers

Sometimes, you’re at work.

Sometimes, you hear news.

Sometimes, you sit in the Shay-ed of the trees and think you are calm.

And other times you hear the news and realize that shade is actually just the absence of light.

Sometimes people call and you cannot answer.

Sometimes you have things to do but you cannot do them.

Sometimes a Car’ll pass by and whistle and you realize, once again, that you are a hole (or two) and not a whole.

And other times you wear your clothes and your hair, and make all your turns and your stances, and eat all your food feeling that human beings are watching you and thinking to themselves that you are not a human being at all but an object to be watched.

Sometimes you believe in light.

Sometimes you collect evidences for light.

Sometimes you find evidence in yourself of light.

And other times you tear it all down because somebody not only let you down, but let you down in the most disastrously stereotypical way possible: again the fish chases the dead bate, bate that is only dead because he — the fish — and his gender killed it. The butterfly pinned to the page. The one that no one is satisfied with because its oranges aren’t orange enough and its blacks aren’t black enough until it is genetically modified, pinched, and prodded, until it is just a thing and not a flying being with its own inner worth. Not even really a butterfly anymore, a thing that leaves other butterflies in its physical shadow despite their realness, their value, their need to be wanted.

Sometimes, you think you’re flying. Other times, you are being let down. Hard.