robin percyz
if The word for you is dyke
I’ve got a folder in my camera roll called “Dyke Roots.”
Created as a tongue in cheek joke for what made me queer
is now a technicolor manifesto of what saved my life.
Chock full o’ “DYKONS,” dyke-adjacent people, and pop culture artifacts
with cues on how to love, who to love,
and how to wear dyke like a bad bitch with style.
Never underestimate the power of visibility,
even if it’s invisible to you as a six-year old.
Do estimate the years added to your life
because a Black, butch guitarist named Me’Shell Ndegeocello
rocked your world harder
than John Mellencamp in the “Wild Night” music video.
Do thank NYC in the 90s for blessing you with RENT on Broadway.
A queer rainbow of otherness having an orgy
and teaching you that love wins decades before “love wins.”
Oh yeah, that sex can look and feel different
than your “Ken and Barbie missionary” tales of yore.
Measure your life in love.
Measure it in how many years you’ve been sober
because you fell in love with P!NK at 15
and she’s still saving your 38-year old life.
Do bow down on your knees to Black trans women before you.
Bow down to Marsha P. Johnson and the Stonewall Riots
for laying the bloody red carpet of freedom that you skip on.
I believe in the unconscious knowing of queerness.
That we navigate the streets, look up just as a fellow queer is within eye gaze.
Gays!
It’s not happenstance, it’s magic, because we are. Like a superpower.
When we lock eyes, squint, do the gay nod that
silent screams “we see each other,”
laser beams bind us together in a cotton candy universe
straight out of a Lisa Frank animation,
where we are saddled on unicorns, flying through clouds of rainbows,
landing gingerly on a golden, glitter-flecked brick road
staring head on into the eyes of another queer.
You are safe here. You are home.
It sounds fantastical and mythical
because that is what queer acceptance is after being locked in a chamber of shame,
muzzled, gagged, and drowned by alcohol.
I don’t hide anymore. I don’t limit myself to the either/or,
the femme/butch binary of lipstick lesbian or diesel dyke.
We’re a world within a world on the dyke spectrum. You can have it all, be it all.
I scream “femme dyke”
from the bottom of my cunt
to the tip of my boxing glove.
Get you a girl who can do both:
beat her face with red rouge,
then beat another’s with a nasty right hook.
If the word for you is dyke,
wear it like a bare chest without a bra.
Wear it like a first-choice word: don’t say “lesbian”
to make them comfortable if that’s not what feels right to you.
Wear it like your high heels or Doc Martens
are stomping the patriarchy with every saunter.
Wear it in a skin tight mini dress, a three-piece suit, a tight lineup
on your butch, masculine of center head, or anything in between.
Wear it like a woman, trans woman, non-binary
HUMAN who rejects TERFs.
Wear it like a pussy riot over government that wants to erase
your love, your rights, your identity.
Wear it like an Alcoholics Anonymous chip
after 17 years of sobriety, a badge of honor.
If the word for you is dyke, stop what you’re doing,
create a folder in your camera roll labeled “Dyke Roots.”
Laugh. Then cry as you add artifacts of people and things that saved your life.
Laugh that cis-het people don’t require the privilege
of a folder on their phone dedicated to being a superhero.
Beating death over and over throughout life.
I don’t believe in religion, but I believe in dykes.
And if there is a God, she’s a Black, butch Goddess who saved my life.
If the word for you is dyke, I fucking love you.
I love us.
Robin is a queer writer living in the New York Metropolitan region, spending the majority of her career as a Content Manager. She has overseen content staff at online marketing and website design firms and has served as a member of The Society for Menstrual Cycle Research. She was invited to present her piece, “Boxing and Bleeding” at their Conference “Re: Cycling” where Gloria Steinem was in attendance. Robin was a competitive amateur boxer for four years. She was recently published on Ink & Marrow Lit featuring her poem, “When Steven Calls From Prison.” If she can help others feel visible through her work, she will consider that success. You can find her on Instagram @its_ra_ra__.
