achilles

“Achilles’ eyes lift. They are bloodshot and dead. “I wish he had let you all die.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Memory sifts. Memory lifts. Memory makes due with what it is given. Memory is not about facts. Memory is an inconsistent measurement of the pain in one’s life.”
― Brandon Taylor, Real Life

“Some Men Have Vaginas

He said he was a gay man
with a vagina and I, penis heavy
and light of foot, wondered
if gay meant the same to him
as it did to me, wondered
if man was in mind or body.
Because I wear my man,
strip down bare to my man.
In the mirror, there, I am.
For me, man has merely been
a matter of circumstance,
not a journey or discovery.
I rarely had to fight for it,
rarely want to fight against it,
never wanted to shed skin
to reveal somebody else.
I never questioned it until
he said, "Some men have vaginas."
I understood it to be true
but it left me feeling nothing
more than a tool, who knew
nothing about being a man
outside his own body.”
― Dean Atta, The Black Flamingo

“I imagine us in Eden—
two black boys in Paradise,
naked, no fig leaves.
Adam and Eve are long gone,
so Kieran and Michael
inherit the garden
and the serpent is forgotten
and the fruit on the tree of knowledge
has gone rotten”
― Dean Atta, The Black Flamingo