Not just a moment of fragility
We will say
We are going to have a good time
That we will fill all the waking hours
With each other
With friends
There will be so much good
So many photos of us
Laughing, preening
Having an instaneity of joy
That we can show them to
Others
To ourselves
Put them in our hands
And rub fingers across the glossy surface
Of a now concrete memory
Captured: that was us
We were happy
Right there,
We were happy
Right next to
The 4am conversations we will share
Our strategies
Our, stories of surviving
Anger for the ones who hurt you,
Giddy over the petty
revenge we will plot
And how we will worry
We are wasting the good times
Being permeable to the past
Undone
Fuck that
Lets over share to each other
Lets hold hands and bring ourselves
To the brink of tears
Lets fill the spaces
with our self-conscious rambling
and let our softness
sharpen to such a fine edge
that those who don’t know how to handle us
are left with a permanent reminder:
we are fragile,
a forced form and temperament
never asked for
and we will not be the only ones
to bleed over it
Lets do all of the things we told ourselves
Were too close to being sad
Right here
Right here is where we will have
Pictures of each other happier than we will be
A few hours from now
They will not be an argument
Against the low drum buzz
Of our respective madness
Or an artifact to give them creedence
They will be for us
As a liminal space
We were never here to make
Each other stay happy
To make each other well
Whatever that might look like
We were here to witness
To be a presence
To carve out of the flawed
narratives of progress
a piece of something just for us;
spitting in the face of a search for
something redemptive
and there is absolutely nothing about us
that needs redemption
To the moments we were
together:
We are here to say
These memories
are enough
Prairie Faul’s work can be found in the burning sugar cane fields of her youth, in walks through Portland, and whenever softness is at its most elusive. Her trans-angst can also be found at motsduprairie.
