Fear in the Shadow of Pulse Nightclub
 
I.                    Two days after graduation my daughter shaved her head.
Mostly.  Leaving a crop of short stalks
like splintered toothpicks protruding from her scalp.
She asked me to touch her hair,
feel it bristle. We both laughed as I discovered
the resilience of her new hair.
How it rises without any self-consciousness
between my fingers
and then settles back
when I let go.  

II.              I can see the shape of her skull now,
like when she emerged from the only epidural I ever had.  
Wanted to have all four daughters, natural. Wanted
to dig a deep hole with my fingers out in the bush.
Wanted to squat on my haunches and birth these babies
pushing life out of heaving life
alone circle breathing through my labor.
Wanted to severe the umbilical cord
with my own incisors. Wanted
to plant the placenta under a Linden tree.
Wanted to comingle her blood and my blood,
with the raw dirt of the earth.      
And this planting would guarantee       
she will always return home, feel connected to the earth,      
grow to be a gardener herself, maybe.       
Be eternally rooted to this firm ground.      

III.            After Pulse nightclub
with 49 lives gunned down,
I worry she may be a target.
Scripture wielded as a weapon.      
Don’t ask that guy – he wants to hang them all      
45 says of Pence. Taking aim at her
with abomination or blasphemy.  
In their crosshairs.   

IV.           She identifies as a woman.
Prefers the pronouns she/her.
Abandoned the strappings of a bra years ago.
Refuses to line her eyes with kohl.
Paints no blush on her lips.  

I remember how the freckles appeared
every June. Across her nose and her cheeks.
We would count them in the evening
by the light of a jar of lightning bugs.
Catch and release.  

V.               One night we saw Milk.
An auditorium bursting
with LGBTQ+ folks and their allies.  
My daughter turns to me:              
Are we all just sitting ducks               
for someone filled with hatred?  

I wonder if insanity will enter,
desiring to rid the world
of who and what he refuses to understand.
An advocate of conversion therapy.
Or a victim of such torture.  

I worry all the time. In the bathroom,
when someone mistakes her for a male.
On the train to Chicago, roaring out of the Midwest,
gathering for the Pride Festival. Standing in line at Hucks Gas Station,
where cars are draped in confederate flags.
Where affection between two women is shouted down.  

And so I ready myself for an onslaught.      
Pivot my body toward hers,      
determined to cover her      
with my mother self      
if bullets ever take over the soundtrack.