Thoughts on Pride

As we zig zag though side streets, she turns and says "You know, I go to the Cuff to sort of make sense of it all". I suppose that's why we go to gay bars--whatever we are trying to make sense of. I think about the history of pride month, the various uprisings, lifetimes of an up hill battles, the gore mixed with glitter. It's three days before pride and you can feel it rising, the bigger smiles, bigger drinks, it's a little bit like the rise of rainbow feeling acid reflux. Our bodies are trying to digest our once a year gorge on the beauty of our experience, despite whatever it is we lost. We all have lost something/someone-- in battles there are always losses.

I grew up a little bit east of everywhere, where one small town bleeds to the next. Pride mattered, the internet was still stuttering and the winters were long. There was no corporate sponsorship. Just people, in park, on a summer day. I was 16, I didn't know about uprisings, I didn't know what love felt like but I knew that I belonged there some how, I didn't yet know what it would cost me to belong, or that I would end up on the outside anyways.


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It isn't true you know.
That rainbows and glitter
some how make it better
it doesn't get better
it gets different
its like growing up
and looking
at that old bike with training wheels
and somehow
it looks smaller
and we forget
that we got bigger
I think a photographer
would say
It's about perspective
no one talks about the storms
that blow in the rainbows
or the glass that was shattered
to make the glitter
there's a story here
that we just can't seem to remember
but it's etched into our bones
buried in our veins
covered in cobwebs in our history
and we forget about the pain
because rainbows
are rare
and beautiful
but fading with
ever breath, step, march.