Nomad

Here, I know about the plight
born out of wandering the darkness of home,
and passing through contours out of myself into the wild
that inhabits ghost boys, wanderers, and nomads
in search for bodies, who sit on the pier counting roads out of the village.
God counts our names
on prayer beads from north to south, to the origin of queer.
I know about the plight of men here,
who seek ways to enter my body to be free.
They travel cities to find themselves, they walk across my lips,
and leave me shouting names of men
whose bodies once became dust, and the remains of burnt cities.
We are nomads here. I open my body into forgetting all unhappy routes
when I arrive at each border with a country in a suitcase. And
the immigrant officer unpacks it like his clothes;
at its base, ants in departures fleeing away for salvation.
Salvation is not a found thing, nor the hardening of soft boys filled with love.
Tonight, the road is going back to them
from a place where you cannot dance
till your body tastes of freedom,
from a place where men who kiss men are lynched,
from a place where they brought women to heal us,
&
from a place where we become hard.