Orlando

When the first responders entered the Pulse Nightclub
 After the massacre in Orlando
 They walked through the horrific scene of bodies and called out
 "If you are alive, raise your hand."
 I was sleeping in a hotel in the Midwest at the time
 But I imagine in that exact moment, my hand twitched in my sleep
 Some unconscious part of me aware that I had a pulse, that I was alive
 The next day, I woke to the news that an assault rifle had fired
 202 bullets through a gay bar, on Latin Night
 In one of the worst massacres in US history
 A massacre of people
 Who did not leave the dance floor when they heard gunshots
 Because they thought they were just the beats of a song
 Everyone around me spent that day grieving and
 Every tear was someone's dance sweat, drying in the morgue
 Later that night, I was on stage
 Performing for an audience that had spent two hours in line
 Waiting to get to the metal detectors
 I couldn't keep my hand from covering my heart
 I kept scouring the club for the fastest route to every exit
 I knew the person working security was in a text war
 And wasn't keeping his eyes on the door
 I knew there was a man in the fifth row
 Picking at the seams of his duffel bag
 Every few seconds, I'd eye the balcony
 For the glint of whatever might aim
 To tear the bodies off of the spirits of the boys holding hands
 Or the girls with their hair cut short as my temper
 When rage is a decibal I can actually get to
 When I not just grieve sick and ruined
 Watching history not be history, watching the music not be music
 Knowing someone having the best night of her whole life said
 "This is my favorite song."
 And then a rifle lifted over a bathroom stall and emptied
 A magazine into the kidneys of a grown man texting
 "Mommy, I'm gonna die."
 His hand prints in blood on the walls
 Reaching for people dying in the fetal position
 People covered in their friend's blood
 Sobbing too hard to hide from their own deaths
 While people outside pushed bandannas into bullet wounds
 It's true, what they say about the gays being so fashionable
 Their ghosts, they never go out of style
 Even life, it's like funeral practice
 Half of us already dead to our families before we die
 Half of us on our knees trying to crawl
 Into the family photo that night
 On stage I kept remembering being fifteen at Disneyland
 Wearing my best friend's hoodie like it was my boyfriend's class ring
 How many years it took me to just touch her face
 How many years I spent praying my heart could play dead
 Till the threat was gone, till the world changed
 Till history was history, but history
 It just keeps coming for the high
 Keeps shooting up bodies
 Keeps drumming up reasons to have metal detectors at
 Poetry readings where the poems
 They're just unanswered calls
 To people who claim their God
 Or their apathy, is unwilling to accept the charges
 Dear God, how broke do you have to be, to not buy people time
 To get out the door when the song goes to fucking hell
 When this world drunk on hate
 Decides blood is wine and drinks its fill
 In the only place they ever thought was safe
 In the only place they thought they did not have to hide
 In the only place they were wanted because
 Because of who they loved and how they loved and how they loved
 Till someone walked through their bodies and asked who was still alive
 And hardly anyone put their hand up