Jasmyn Huff

A Prayer for Tracey from El Paso

I imagine El Paso crimson the color of burning sky lit by Lilith’s chucked Molotov cocktail and
rage against the men who descended on you knowing you were alone

kicked out doors closed backs turned

because the state will investigate anyone who loves protects helps you defiance
punishable by taking away a life the state wants to box you in place a fence around you with
barbed steel razor sharp glinting in the light of security lamps placed strategically around to make
sure you stay who they want you to be

I imagine a police precinct imposing brutalist structure denied as Inanna reduces them to ruins
and ash refusing their pleas as they refused yours

scared alone helpless

because they cannot bear her priestess who reigns defies breaks their small notions of
normal acceptable behavior who refuses to live boxed in and below ground but instead
above them regal in bearing and celestial in power a heart filled with love they cannot touch or
gain access to yet they will try to convince us they own us

I imagine you me all of us like Ishtar rising from the ruins and ash of their small closed fenced-in
world rains of fire tumbling from our mouths as we raise

higher loftier soaring

because the wind fanning the flames is the same wind lifting us the same wind loving
us the same wind wrapping us in warmth and love and ourselves the self we know
remains worthy despite their words and renunciations the self we know will survive their
wrath because their wrath remains wrapped in jealousy that we do what they cannot the self
that returns

We are goddesses unbound from their rules they try to impose prayed in trans
Babel defied in our common tongues deified

sweet loving embracing

inspiring the hatred of their humanity raised hands admitting their godfear ignorant their hands
praise us with their attention strengthen us with each insult revealing we rival their false god of
rules and death and order unable to be ordered by them refusing to fear them

I pray to Lilith to Inanna to Ishtar to us