Che Justus | in that place where we don’t have to die to be remembered

Special Feature:
100 Thousand Poets for Change — Birmingham
Edited by Ashley M. Jones, Laura Secord, and Alina Stefanescu

Che Justus

in that place where we don’t have to die to be remembered

let the foundation be all the years it took to relearn what feeling felt like. each brick laid a name/question/rejection/sideeye cast into our hopeful hands. let there not be any walls. aren’t we exhausted with building walls? tear them down. tear these borders down. Tear these prisons down. tear these nation-states down. we never needed them. instead, we need all this space — boundless. we need it wide open. this room isn’t just for me. call in every person — living or dead — who has ever been like me, with me, or ever held someone like me. tell them to bring all their stuff, all their children. tell them to call and conjure all their spouses, deities, ancestors, comrades, kin, homies, teachers, friends, and unnameables. invite them all in so we can fill this empty space, fill its silences, overflow these barren rooms, reshape them with our fullness. fill them up with unbridled laughter. fill them up with the loud fragrance of feasting. fill them up with so many mirrors we must learn to confront and love every angle of ourselves. fill this room with a bed big enough for all my lovers, their lovers, our pets, and every dream we ever had. this is where we want to be. a room that is ours, together. a home we are not forced to leave. but that is not enough. we will need the rest of the world too. because we refuse to disappear. we refuse to apologize. we refuse to move. and if we do choose to move, we can go anywhere we please. and we can be as bold, as soft, as broken, as wild as we want to be. and even then we can still come back — the front door unlocked, our soles sore from dancing, and lie down in this bed in one whole piece.

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