Tan Arsa Sagara

if god hates the gays why am i an angel

i.

you who judge in place of him
you who chants i am holy hatefully
what are you compared to me
who brings the evening to life
and carried your prayer to your mouth?

ii.

i remember when i was told the world will try to take this from you. i remember when i was
asked are you sure? and well picture this, you are a child at the beach playing with your cousins
and your mother says hurry, it’s almost evening prayer time. and you run back to her just in time
to catch the sun closing its eyes and resting its pounding head against the sea, the calmness of the
waves holding it making it glow with love love love. and the sparkles look like fairies. i have
talked to the stars and they were hungry for open-mouth kisses. for teenage dreams and a boy
asking a boy to prom. forever is only a sunset away.

iii.

he was like the dusk and i was scared
of the possibility of fading away
so i told him let’s go to the garden
he shook his head no and said
why don’t you stay here?

he’s brewing coffee now,
evening prayer ten hours away.
i don’t try to pull the sun closer
because i am mortal now like time
and i should worship before it dies.

content warnings: misgendering, internalised homophobia, mention of dysphoria, religious imagery


i am baptised under a red and white flag
the river sings of blood and bones
skin isn’t necessary to have a body
there is a risk in escaping high school

in his mouth i find a hiding place
in his shoulder blades i find my dying
wish—a prayer for undefined intimacy
summer can’t bring me warmth

my girl, my girl, my girl
he repeats it like it’ll change
the fact that he has fallen in love
against the teachings of our pastor

don’t disagree with me he’d say
or at least it felt like a knife
his voice cuts through my chest
an alternative for my dysphoria

i’m not on our first date
turns into i might be on our third
when is our last? i want to ask
but he’s the only mistake i want to make

and for that i never ask to be a prince
i press myself against him all drowsy
breathe in his neck and hold back a fit
and almost ask him if he loves me

there is a risk in escaping high school

if i wasn’t indonesian with pink hair would i be here

i pretended to wear my body like the moon pretends to wear the waves
i recognised the way the light touches the water but i didn’t want to
that shouldn’t have been a part of me but choice is a common myth, right?

i scratched my arm a little when i saw myself in the mirror—i don’t mean to
be so rude to god’s creation but i think there was a fault somewhere
because why do i only feel like myself when i should be hurting?

when i’m presented with a headline that says VIRAL GAY COUPLE
TUTORIAL ON HOW TO BE GAY IN INDONESIA
YOU MAY BE OUTLAWED and yet now, why do i feel alive?

i pray every day in the four-month mourning period knowing
there is nobody to hear me but myself. no witness to me being a child
lost between someone who calls me precious and another who says

i am an infidel in every sense of the word and i was not meant to be born
—but if that’s the case then why am i so loved? why did the drag queen
at that japanese restaurant tell me, oh my god you are so handsome?

when i go back home to jakarta i should make sure to pack my skirts
i’ll be a pretty boy and everyone will spend four months thinking
what are you? and to that i will take birth control and reply why are you?

i pretend to wear my shame like the lake pretends to wear the trees
that is to say not at all because a demigod is no less of a divine being
and i am no less of an angel, and i haven’t fallen yet, so what have you?

Tan Arsa Sagara is sometimes a writer, most times a threat. They're also studying for their undergraduate, please send them your best wishes. Their thoughts can be found on Twitter: @tanarsas.