They say coming out —
stop me if you've heard this one,
if you already know how fun it is to say,
I am gay! I am trans, I am lesbian
and I am proud.
Stop me if you've already learnt the ways
that things end up back in the closet,
taken to the grave.
Stop me if you've already watched a friend, or a lover
stand atop the pyre, and burn away
everything that made them who you wanted to be with, for the rest of your days.
Mama Ujong took a lover, you know, they say
in these old Kristang legends that bubble to the surface
of my psyche. Permaisuri had her own maze
of lovers, her own beautiful strays and flowers;
her own understanding of this kind of power's
refining and redefining,
a sense of what comes after;
but she knew, too, that it is so easy to falter
and fall back into the hate, and the gutter
where you look up at the stars, and see yourself laughing with them
and do nothing in return.
Is this what you want to wear today, tonight,
for the rest of your life?
A false start, a lying heart,
an inauthentic truth inveighed for the chance to say
i actually have a life.
Who does, honestly?
I'd say
fast fashion is, these days, all too rife
with innocuous, unsustainable banality.