There's a girl I'm calling Z. Z is short for my middle initial, not my middle name. Z's been appearing at the center of my work lately. Sometimes, I find it's her voice speaking, when I meant for it to be my own.

But Z is me, sort of. She's a part of me that I don't usually focus on. She's a more daring, more perverse, more shameless version of me. I'd call her an exaggeration of myself, but let's face it, sometimes when we exaggerate ourselves, it just comes out looking more honest than we're used to.

I guess Z is not really a girl at all, but a woman. I forget sometimes because Z can remember her childhood so well - or, should I say, she remembers my childhood. So, I may think of her as a girl-woman, but Z has no question that she's left girlhood behind.

Z tells stories that aren't quite my stories, or so I think at the time. She goes places that can make people cringe, make them approach me after I've read my work, bringing wide eyes and the question, "Wow, did that really happen to you?" I shake my head, and I'm halfway through my no, no, nos when I realize that yes, that is my truth, in a way. They're the same places I've been, just called by different names. The same colors I've seen, cast in different shades. But I continue shaking my head, and draw out my chuckle so it doesn't halt as a lump in my throat.

Z feels what I feel, only she lets herself show it. She even gets angry. Anger, the emotion I fear the most, swells in Z like a beat that won't hit until it courses through all of her veins. She's like me in the way that anger makes her tremble, makes her feel like expressing herself will set off a cannon that can't be recaptured, only Z wants to make a sound. Her biggest fear is, sometimes, my biggest comfort. Silence.

I'm not sure what to do with Z now. Sure, I could set up some long-term goals for her, all the works, with a book series deal and a reality TV gig and all, but I'm talking right now. I don't know how to finish her poems. I don't even know how to finish this post.

In a way, that's why I like giving up some control to a raw character like Z. I think I could learn from stepping back and listening to her memories and insights. It may be a messy process, one full of surprises, but with Z's truth, mine comes stumbling forward.

All biographies like all autobiographies like all narratives tell one story in place of another. –Hélène Cixous

I’ve been really moved by poet Staceyann Chin’s recent articles in the Huffington Post. If you haven’t seen them, check out her conception story here, and her open letter to her unborn child here. Her heartfelt words are touching enough to make anyone cheer for her on her journey into motherhood.

Or so I thought. But amidst the love and support, Staceyann is facing a bit of a backlash. Turns out, not everyone is as excited as I am about the idea of a single black lesbian becoming a loving mother.

What does this have to do with me, as a writer? Well, first of all, there are the limits that some want to impose on queer women of color. Limits on our bodies, on the stories we can write. And everyone faces such limits – the boxes we’re meant to fit into so that we help maintain the order of things. Where, in the stereotypical images of motherhood, do we find a woman like Staceyann? A woman like me?

This past Mother’s Day, after calling my mother, I headed out for work. The first person to speak to me was a man standing on the street, holding out a cup for change and greeting everyone who passed.

“Happy Mother’s Day,” he said to me. “Even though I know you’re not a mother. I can tell!”

I wondered, how could he tell I wasn’t a mother? Did I look, to him, too young to have a child? Too well-rested, perhaps, to know a mother’s worry? A little too unhappy, maybe, to know the love of a child?

What he didn’t know is that a little over four years ago, I was ready to be a mother. Ready is a funny word for a newly single, pregnant twenty year old with no clue as to how I was going to support the unexpected new life, but ready I was. Sure the power of love and sheer will would give me the tools I needed. Though I’m not one to believe in destiny, I felt that while this surprising turn was certainly a challenge, it was meant to be. There was a lot of pain in my life at the time, and in a way, the new life felt like the door at the end of my suffering.

My entire life had already shifted to focus on my child, but then the new life left the world just as unexpectedly as he or she had come. I had a miscarriage, and fell back into a suffering deeper than I’d ever known before.

It’s a funny thing about pain. I don’t often talk about this time of my life, but it certainly appears in my writing, and often in ways I don’t expect. If it’s meant for others to read, I often wrap pieces of it into fiction or poetry so far from my own story that I don’t bother trying to claim it as truth.

But what of my story of motherhood? Is there room for voices like mine among narratives of mothers?

At the end of Staceyann Chin’s letter to her unborn child, she writes, “Child of mine, these promises are only what I intend. And when I come up short on those grand intentions, I give you permission to whip out this letter and remind me of what I had put in writing long before you were born.”

I, too, wrote letters, made pacts with my child, promises to be loving, forgiving and honest with each other. The child I lost left these promises in my hands. And there’s no reason I shouldn’t still keep the ones I can. To remember what it’s like when my body is a vessel for another life, and caring for myself is the first step in caring for another. My eyes were opened to a gentleness about the world that I still cannot unsee.

Yes, it’s a funny thing about writing about pain. Much of what I’ve been through makes it difficult to get close to people, hard to open up unless it’s in writing. But when I declare that this is my story, not meant for anyone else, what’s meant to keep me at a distance often connects me to others who have, to my surprise, walked in my shoes.

I appreciate someone like Staceyann Chin adding a new perspective to those voices of mothers we hear in the media. When we hear unexpected voices, it’s an opportunity to learn, and expand our ideas of who can write what stories.

So I’m not waiting, either. Not waiting for anyone else’s permission to write as a mother. Yes, I was a mother once. And though I may not be what you’d expect of a mother – queer, young, childless – yes, I write as a mother still.

Tonight at InsideStorytime, I'm reading a piece set in Trinidad. It's a piece that feels deeply personal, in a strange way. I guess I can wait until after I've read it to elaborate on that. But it makes sense that the idea of writing as an act of discovery applies to reading and sharing work, too.

Each reading brings surprises. Sometimes, discoveries come through self-reflection on my work and its relationship with the audience. And always, I find something new by sharing the experience of that work with the audience.

At last Thursday's Generation FIVE fundraiser, for example, I gained more insight on how my poetry fits into the framework of Transformative Justice. It really felt right to be part of an event that included the brilliant voices of Vanessa Huang and Janee Smith, as well as a moment to join a stand for human rights by making phone calls to support the Pelican Bay Prisoner Hunger Strike. I'm still in the process of taking in everything that evening offered.

For tonight's reading, I'm already making new discoveries, as I think about this piece and what it means to me. I'm also looking forward to readings by Michael David Lukas, Angie Chau, Heather Fowler and Andrew Dugas. With Ransom Stephens as the MC.

Come by if you're in the Bay Area tonight. Our art engages us in conversation, and the more people join, the more we can all discover.

InsideStorytime
Cafe Royale
800 Post Street
San Francisco, California
6:30-8:30 pm

Yesterday, I had a conversation and writing session surrounding the question of memories in error. What does it mean to look back in time, memories in mind, only to find that the truth was not as we remember it? And is each person's memory just one version of the truth? How do we construct our truths - is it some combination of memory, filled in with fiction, overlayed with what some may call lies?

I'm finding these questions especially intriguing now in light of the developments since my last blog post about Syrian "A Gay Girl in Damascus" blogger Amina Adballah. To fill you in: Amina, called a hero for her courageous blog chronicling her life as an out lesbian under the oppressive regime of Syria, was allegedly abducted by armed gunmen earlier this week.

Amina's story has spread, just as those of us supporting her had hoped, with major news outlets covering her abduction and the following campaign to release her. The result is that, even in her absence, Amina has continued to raise awareness around the world of those who are suffering, their human rights violated as they struggle for the freedom to simply be who they are.

And now, a new layer to the story - apparently, photos of Amina that have been circulating may be photos of someone else entirely. The media has had a difficult time finding anyone who has actually met Amina, and now people are wondering whether the Amina we are rallying for even exists at all.

And what would it mean if she didn't? There are some who say that it doesn't matter, because whatever the truth of her identity, the author of the blog has raised awareness, telling some part of the truth of LGBTQ Syrians who are suffering. They also remind us that focusing on whether or not Amina exists may distract from the possibility that there is somebody, still, being detained against her will.

Others would say that such a revelation would take away from everything "Amina" has done, with the truth that rallied us to action revealed as nothing more than a lie. Part of the argument against Amina's existence is an old blog post explaining that some of what she writes will be autobiographical, while some will be fiction, and she won't always say which is which. Does this mean we've been swallowing lies?

Well, regardless of who it is who wrote those blog posts, I believe I can relate to her. Not only as a queer woman of color, but also as a writer caught somewhere between fact and fiction in storytelling. I know that I've written fiction some have read as truth, and told truths read as fiction. What does it mean when I don't take the time to clarify which is which? Am I telling lies? Or exploring just another way of illuminating the truth?

What do you believe is true?

From yesterday's writing:
shipwrecks on the water's surface
sailing with wind
blown from bones
long buried
in an ocean grave

Lately, my poetry has been leaving me with a heightened sense of identity. Of course, I've always been constantly aware of walking the wire between who others expect me to be and who I am. But recently, I've been putting more of myself in my work, in such a raw, honest way that I imagine anyone reading might actually come closer to understanding my identity than ever before.

The thought terrifies me.

So I've been working it out through pieces like this one, which will be ever-evolving...

It begins when they hear of my poetry. There are, after all, certain expectations of poets. I will arrive wearing glasses and a thick brown coat. I will arrive with my own beer tucked into my sleeve.

Instead I arrive wearing long brown cloak they believe has been designed for the sole purpose of attracting attention. I know it as my skin. They use it as the basis for their next expectations of me. Of where I’m from. Of what I’ll say. Of who I’m with.

At the first mention of queer, they understand me as a lesbian poet, even though I am not one.

If I mention first, instead, the touch of a man, they understand me as a straight poet, even though I am not one.

Anything in between, and they think they get me now – get that I’m just setting out to break the mold, for surely I can be myself without being so defiant. Surely I can pour my story into them without stirring the crowd.

Surely they understand me. As long as I tell my story like I’m a mama at bedtime, covering with band-aids the cracks that may send their souls falling the eternal distance from the world they believed to be true.

Of course I am who they want me to be.

Their fears would blow gusts of nightmares through their daydreams if I dared to be anything else.

I don’t know what to call this, but I’ve been working on it during the past couple of days. Let’s call it creative non-fiction. I may add to it later, so you might see it again.

A thank-you card faces me as I write this morning. It’s from CUAV, for my involvement in last year’s Safetyfest. “Thank you for building queer & trans power to create safety,” the front of the card reads. I like to think it applies to what I do when I sit here, blogging and writing.

Life in the Bay Area these days: Safeytfest is coming, and the coyotes are returning to the city. I guess this means it’s time for me to sacrifice something to them again. When I was a child, it was the cats they captured, and recently I’ve been feeling like it’s my writing routine. The coyotes, I hear, come out during the hours I used to reserve for writing. I imagine their slender bodies slinking through the streets, camouflage colors gleaming bright against the black asphalt beneath the rising sun as they gobble up the words I don’t record when they can find nothing else to eat.

I can find plenty of other ways to sit before a blank page, when I’m not writing on it. This morning, I’m thinking about Safetyfest, non-violence, the idea that a commitment to ending violence can take so many different forms. I’m thinking of peace as a practice, a discipline, in the same way that I develop a writing routine as a practice.

What does peace look like when I’m practicing it as I write? Where does it land in my body? Is it in my fingers, which uncurl to find letters, rather than making a fist? Is it on my skin, in my scars? For every moment that I’m not retaliating against someone who hurt me, that I’m writing instead of continuing the cycle of violence, is the practice of peace settling in my hunched back, laying rest in my unflexed muscles?

I imagine, in this sense, that you’ve done something this morning to practice peace. What was it? Staying silent to listen to the birds, or adding your own song? Taking up a child in your arms, rather than taking up arms? Re-opening your favorite book, instead of old wounds?

Here’s a thank-you to you. Thank you for practicing peace. May it rest in your body always, in all that you do.

I’ve been feeling a little guilty about something. Namely, about the fact that I’ve been doing all this complaining about growing up without seeing myself reflected in the books I was reading, which wasn’t entirely true. It was true most of the time in school, but I’m grateful at least that I had a mom who was conscious enough of how difficult that experience would be for me to make sure I saw myself in books at home. The books she brought home for me usually focused on little girls of color, so in some way I knew I wasn’t alone in the world.  

She has no idea what she got herself into. I’m sure a simple thank-you would have been fine, but no, I’m showing my gratitude by telling the world how inspired I was by those stories and writing my own. So she finds herself showing up sometimes, in places like my holiday coming out story. And in today’s holiday time story, which was inspired by her determination to have me see myself in another art form, dance. I don’t remember the details, so let me start by saying that this is a completely fictionalized, highly dramatized, and frighteningly accurate version of the story. 

That last part is a joke, as far as I know. Read on...