What is pride:
When Black women are killed on the street?
When trans women die in concentration camps?
When indigenous women and girls are murdered and missing?
When refugees sleep huddled beneath silver blankets on hard ground?
When humans are crammed so tightly into cages they can barely breathe?
When at risk teens are left on the streets?
When men are shot or choked or tased to death?
When police carry rainbow stickered guns?
When multi-national corporations fly streamers from floats
As they exploit our bodies and smother the air?
In a world that would trample us to dust…
What is pride?
Pride is a roar into the night.
A brick thrown at the walls of oppression.
The shout of our worth.
The breaking of chains.
The proclamation of our gorgeousness.
An insistence on love.
Pride is chosen family. Chosen home.
Pride is you. Pride is me.
Fat. Thin. Disabled.
Black. Latinx. Asian. Indigenous. White.
Housed or unhoused. Young or old.
Trans or cis or none of the above.
Pride is everyone who has fought to be here.
Pride is a queering of our vision.
Pride says fuck you to everyone
Who would prefer to see us fall.
Pride says this is our birthright:
To be free.
To live, heads held high, fingers snapping,
A swagger in our boots,
Drunk on our own beauty,
High on the laughter of friends.
So––happy or not––Bless Your Pride,
My friends and comrades.
Let us celebrate this world while we still can.
June, 2019
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