oh, i almost forgot... it's that time of the year
*lights a virtual candle and sits next to it in silence for a while*
🕯️ 🏳️‍⚧️⚧️❤️

#TransgenderDayOfRememberance #TDOR

Gedenkveranstaltung zum Tag der Erinnerung an die Opfer #trans*feindlicher Gewalt

Wo: Theatervorplatz (Olof-Palme-Platz), Stralsund
Wann: Donnerstag, ab 17 Uhr

Anlässlich des Transgender Day of Remembrance gedenken wir der Menschen, die durch trans*feindliche Gewalt ihr Leben verloren haben. Kommt Donnerstag ab 17 Uhr zum Theatervorplatz (Olof-Palme-Platz) und bringt eine Kerze mit für ein solidarisches Erinnern!

#stralsund #hst #transgenderawarenessweek #TransgenderDayofRememberance

Give or accept a pizza today #TransgenderDayofRememberance #tdor

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdaC5yk-RVutO3JneYl7-8M5USTn4fWuFwbb7aWe638B2UHEw/viewform

Some feelings have been wanting out since Nov 6.

#TransgenderDayofRememberance helped them take shape.

---

"Give me your tired, your poor"
reads the patina-etched sign on the door.
Our lives are held hostage to settle some score
between men long dead in centuries before.

This world says we're groomers and perverts and whores;

it stymies our joy and then kills us for sport;
it buries our names beneath unmarked floors
and treads on our memories it loves to abhor.

And still we persist; and still we seek more:
an invisible truth harbored safe in our core.
We're hated and hunted and labeled and torn.
We give and we're taken; we love and we're scorned.

Existence is change from the moment we're born,

and change is salvation from skin wrongly formed.
By surgical hands we're reshaped like ore,
Made malleable in the heat of the forge.

Our outside is beauty; our headspace is war.
Our siblings and children taken too soon we mourn.
What more must we forfeit? How much more endure?
What sacrifice make so our future's assured?

What is our purpose, we tired, we poor?

To nourish machines fueled by our corpses?
To consume and be consumed as fodder?

To dance as marionettes on the strings of corporate overlords?
To receive our meagre scraps with contrite and humble hearts?
To expend our minds and bodies for the "promise" of tomorrow?

Why have we accepted an imposed purpose at all?
Why are production and efficiency our goals?
We are humans; not automatons.

Our joy exists together, in the space between hearts.
We live for community, not manufacturing milestones.
We are not fuel; we are the fire.
We burn on our own, and together brighter.
Brick by brick, we build roads, not walls,

so our children and theirs may grow as they are
with neither fear nor hate for the differences
that identify us as humans.

We are rich in things no mathematics or language can describe.
Our stories are beautiful flashes.
We change what we must to be who we are.
We choose pain as a remedy for anguish.
Our efforts improve a tomorrow we may never see.

Closing your eyes cannot extinguish the light.

As one saying goes,

"Mourn the dead, and fight like hell for the living."

#TransgenderDayofRememberance