Man Pulling BB Gun at Capital Pride Parade Triggers Panic, 2019

CW: GUN VIOLENCE, MASS PANIC, VIOLENCE TOWARDS LGBTQIA+

When the man with the bible screams
repent, the femmes bend over
& twerk, glittered asses clapping closed the word of gawd
damn, yas queen

When we get raw-dogged by the sun 
& a bitch gets hangry 
we step into the cool heaven
of the family-owned Thai & Pho Bistro

When we have our glasses of dry, red wine which rock us quickly 
& steaming plates of noodles, egg rolls & peanut sauce
my friend & I take snapchats with his DADDY hand-fan, 
seductively slurping our food. Comfy in our selves.

When I joke about how tired I am, I say 
I pissed in a parking garage today⎯I want to DIE 
(pronounced dOH-EYe). 
We laugh, we forget about the filled streets around us. 

When we glance outside faces flip from flippant & fantastic 
to fear as the parade splits & marching turns
to running, ducking. There is the clanging of forks on plates
& the searching of eyes as we try to dissect 

the scene playing out in this real life 
& there’s a still moment, a return to stasis, a chuckle 
dismissal of our worst fears, the loaded 
pistol in the back of all of our minds. 

The pistol is air-soft & imitation 
silver in a brown paper bag. 
We don’t know yet it’s being brandished, 
that back in the circle Pride is beginning to panic. 

When the crowd breaks into chaos again the owner locks
the door and the restaurant hits the floor & I’m sitting 
under a gum-stuck table too paralyzed to rip 
my friends away from the horror of the storefront, they always told us this⎯stay away

from windows & glass & anything that can shatter. 
There’s a girl banging on the door & there is screaming 
& there is the sound of your heart a beating machine 
gun & there’s the knowing eyes of the hetero married couple 

who own the restaurant leading us into the back room, hiding us
in the kitchen where they stir-fried my meal which is now
a slippery mess in my gut. This was in my gut, 
my pessimistic mind, & my father’s eyes

when I left the house for Washington, D.C. 
Though, he was afraid of pickpockets & more so the fact
that I could be gay, 
or swayed. 

When the owners ask if we want water I ask for a boat. 
I think about calling my parents & don’t. 
I’m drowning & when I blink my eyes, my grandmother has a bible 
or bazooka on the street of my being. Later, 

when I tell my brother about this, and how 
the gun was only air, he will try 
to make me laugh, saying he saw the news & said
she can’t die at Pride, she’s not even gay!

& I will try to swallow & choke on a parade
of things to say, & only get out straight
up, bro. On the walk back to the Airbnb the cops tell us it was nothing, 
& it’s safe to go home the way we came. 

I see the tightness in my friend’s chest & the way he keeps
touching his neck & I say no. 
I find the subway. I stomp through the place 
I don’t know & I’m pulsing with rage.  

When we attempt to go to sleep at night I’m relieved the room 
is so small, that I let my lesbo friend plan 
the trip without help. There’s the one bed, & the people I love
who are still alive. 

When we leave for Ohio we leave in the middle 
of the night. When I get back I hug my brother, & my grandma 
takes my grandpa from the porch to inside, shuts the door. 
I know how hard it is to move him, & later I’ll know 

how much I hurt him by not 
coming inside to say hi. 
My grandmother let me keep this crime. 
The dementia took it back. 

When the news comes out that the gun 
was never a gun & the damage was done 
by panic, trolls on Twitter try 
to belittle those struck by it, 

like we don’t live in this country,
& it couldn’t’ve been us,
in the massive crowd, 
with the rainbow-colored targets on our foreheads. 

Like we don’t molt panic & leave it 
strewn across the streets for weeks; 
strip naked from & replace it with multi-
colored robes. 

When I come back from Pride 
I am alive, my friends are alive though
tired, but my family’s mystified to me entire, lost 
color, acquired the hue of ghosts, 

which is to say they’ve died 
to a part of me. They’re more
shell-shocked by my potential sexuality 
than my potential death. 

When we get back to Ohio, before we see our families, 
we go to a rest stop & we each take turns in the bathroom pulling
out the bullets which weren’t buried 
in our bodies.