What the Living Know: For Jaimie

We are the stuff of burnt-out stars
Salt song oceans
Million-year-old mud
Our bones tell us secrets
We do not know this

Sunflowers we planted
in April are 10-foot giants
Russet faces smile down
On us even in the rain
We know this is so but do not know why

The backyard is bereft
Empty of you sitting in your sun dress
Your iced tea with a straw
I was with you the day
you bought the blue gingham from Goodwill

Your shoulders so thin and frail
I wanted to drag
you back into childhood
Take back wishes for easy and quick
We know this is called regret

The shopping cart with
Everything you own is in the garage
The policeman hooks his thumb
Near his gun as he says we can't
Give you your things

Tells me the cart cannot stay
On the street where they
Took you bruised and dirty
to Nisqually for 60 days or three years
We know this is called the system

The place where you are
lets you choose "transgender"
on your electronic profile
Makes you wear men's clothes
We know this is called progress

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Gaian Rena Bird is a Black Indigenous womxn, writer, poet, and artist living in University Place, WA. She is an Elder, a sojourner in liminal spaces, and a denizen of multiple margins. As an introverted human with numerous disabilities, she reveres Crip Time as her superpower. Gaian writes from a place inseparable from her motherline. The works of transgressive Black and Indigenous women are the spiritual food and drink that fuel her words.