I Fight for Love, Unsullied

Words by Tris Meagher

A poem about outrage against oppression and fighting for the queer experience.

I Fight for Love, Unsullied

–After Jack Kerouac 

And soon I will be many, twisting shadows into something more than absence, dreaming one

step beyond fantastical and purer than iodine. Golden, the way we will march, the day-

’s sour blood peeling from the heels of our rotted feet and leaving a trail for our young to follow. I 

learned to wash my soles in rivers we pass. Now I hold my grime like a foal, too virgin to know the will

to live is more privilege than right, eyes open from birth as care from a mother is no more usual to find

than diamonds. When she stands on spindled hooves I will learn to write as I sing, open like the

last rattled exhale of a dying woman. I will be sharp enough to shatter the strongest of bone. Right

between song and sob I will turn my face to the heavens and it will be quiet among the words

spilled from a thousand tired tongues, among a chorus of anger rejoicing in a new home. And

soon they will scream with me, indistinguishable from sorrow, intertwined with rage, and they

will track filth into every clean foyer and smear mud in the grooves of hardwood. There will

be no beauty in anything clean. Together the thousands of me will love and fight until to be

is to be real, until I collapse on muddied grass and know the answers were always simple.