beloveds…
we were never meant to
hide in closets
and we were never to be spoken of
in whispered corners by a
world filled with others
afraid of their own reflections
we are from the flame of
channing’s truth
olympia brown’s relentlessness
in lou alcott’s defiance of societal expectations,
and thoreau’s solitude of freedom –
freedom of solitude
we are here,
heirs of a theology that says
LOVE is love
the soul is not gendered
that covenants live in hearts
not courtrooms
laws can be cruel
and narrow
but our faith remains wide,
widening still more
until every child hears
their pronouns in liturgies
and every parent
of a trans child
hears their entire congregation
reflect back
“you are not alone”
in the face of their fears
we have always been here
from pulpits to picket lines
from the ancestors you called heretics
to our kitchen tables
where we sat with chosen families
speaking our truths into becoming real
this world may pass bans
overturn laws — rewrite constitutions —
threaten us — but our “marriages”
were holy before they were licensed
and our identities were sacred
before we had names
today — again — and every day
bless those coming out
and those staying in
bless the drag
bless the transitioning
bless the questioning
bless the kinfolk
bless our chosen families
and bless us
because we have
faced ourselves, loved
ourselves, saw ourselves
and we declare we are beauty
and goodness
and unicorns
with a bit of rainbow
and a lot of heart
we gather now
in the wake of their efforts to erase
as a sign
that we are not so easy to erase
and knowing that we are
literally love becoming
we were never meant to hide
we were always meant to blaze