come & go.

Soph Bonde / Argot Publications Inc

[Photo description: A distant view of a woman in shorts and a t-shirt walking away down a sun-dappled, tree-lined alley..]

when i came out i swore i wasn’t coming out. who is we? i ask not long after we meet. explosion. i wonder at the strange child. i was. saying no no that’s not what i said. well what are you saying? saying, well what are you? i came out trying to tell a story i hadn’t come to yet.

 i did not come out i was brought in. girl with long hair but only in the sun. before i braided gold over gold over gold hair she liked to say. put this lighter to my wrist. keep it there. no, longer. until later it’s my hand, my wrist all the way inside her. lighter she says. gentle, baby. more.

 later i come out and say it. i kiss strange men in strange beds. strange cars. after work where sun and girls like her never come by. each and every where that’s behind her back. that is where i go. she leaves and i starve myself all summer. when the weather turns i say come back to me.

 kissing her again? explosion. she loved skinny bitches.

 the next time shame came out. dribbled on my lips, frothed corner of my words. lesbian. dyke. gay. butch. trans. femme. scared. queerness down my throat or coming out. i decide.

 i came into my self Hard in my own hands i am more stranger than any man can touch.

 in my room, drugging and binding. rinsing repeating. for a change, they say. come out tonight. i kick down every door that doesn’t smell like starlight. for two whole year i touch nothing and no one.

 now i keep going and with you i keep coming. i never stop eating and you are so strong smelling. explosion. we make up for lost time.

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Sara Gregory (they them + she her) is a nonbinary lesbian writer. In addition to editing and reviewing for the journal Sinister Wisdom, Sara most recently curated the 2019 Sinister Wisdom calendar which celebrates lesbian and queer histories as creative, incendiary, and ongoing. Sara now works in the labor movement and organizes in higher education. They have been published in Jezebel, Autostraddle, INTO, Bust, The Rumpus, and others. Find Sara on twitter @SGregory91 or at saragregory.org