The Truth About Tigers

This year,
the bluebonnets feel like distractions—
a velvet curtain pulled
over something beginning to fray.

In the rearview,
she hums with Billie Eilish in her headphones,
her face still round with youth,
but beginning to learn its angles.

I worry.
A queer kid in public school,
growing up in a state
that tilts harder
with each new bill.

While those at the top
swing hammers at federal protections,
local extremists finally see their opening.

She catches me watching.
I smile,
because she makes me proud—
and because that’s the role
I’ve been handed:
polishing a mask of promise
for a future I no longer trust.

Inside,
I’m taking notes,
tracking exits,
wondering how fast
the country I once fought for
can forget what it promised.

I used to believe in the swing,
that the arc bends back,
that cruelty burns itself out.
Now I’m not so sure.
It feels like we’re circling a drain,
waving Bibles,
burning books,
hiding hate
beneath the language of—

She laughs at something I can’t hear.
The sound slices clean through the noise,
bright and real and perfect
in a field already fading.

Hi, friends! I haven’t posted much lately because I’ve been busy editing a poetry chapbook that just dropped a few days ago: Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age. You can read or download the full collection over at The Chaos Section Poetry Project.

This poem didn’t make it into the chapbook, but it’s cut from the same cloth. I wrote it a few months ago, driving back into the Texas Hill Country with my daughter after visiting family in New Mexico. We traversed the Edwards Plateau, then dropped into the Hill Country, where Austin sprawled ahead. The bluebonnets were blooming and the fields were beautiful, but my mind was elsewhere.

I’d just read an article about anti-LGBTQ legislation targeting public schools here in Texas—can’t even remember which bill, honestly. Around that same time, I saw another headline about the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts that would eliminate funding for the LGBTQ youth suicide prevention hotline. I ended up writing an essay about those cuts, which ran in HuffPost. You can read it here if you’re interested.