Niko Martell - Carpenters - Cupsi 2013

When I came out as ***, I was welcomed out of the closet and into life, as if I had not been living already. *** the closet as a metaphor. I do not come from laundry static, clothes hangers, or worn-out shoes. I come from hate crimes on my street, from too afraid to go to school because last week the headlines were bloody. I come from Stonewall, from protest and pride parade. I come from every friend who loves me more for my honesty. This closet, this altar of dust, it cannot contain all that I am, cannot hold all that we are. We are fire in the soil, smoldering at the roots, we teach timber it is no match for the fury of survival. So *** the metaphor. The closet is nothing more than dumb carpentry and dull hinges, an illusion that blames the oppressed for not opening the door and walking away. The closet is a magic trick that makes the problem disappear, it is an easy excuse for every suicide. We should give credit where it's due. See, prejudice is a generous beast, the more we ignore it the more it keeps giving, so let us recognize the gift, put up a plaque for every carpenter, list the names of each bigot and bully: the Westboro Baptists, the Michele Bachmanns, the teacher who allows the word "***" in class. Show them the closet for what it really is: wood laid out 84 inches long, 28 wide a mahogany maw dressed in silk a coffin waiting for the earth. These carpenters, these makers of caskets, they are telling our stories for us stealing our love and locking it away, as if static cling left razor blade bites, or clothes hampers held baseball bats. Please, we come from deeper earth than that, we come from deeper earth than that, from six feet of other people's ***, and slurs on our headstones. We are premature burials that refuse to stay buried, stubborn truths that strike flint against sawdust, set fire to the tombs and break free from their foundations. We are the kind of triumph that carries dirt beneath its nails and splinters in its teeth. We will not always have the strength for pride. The morning after the beating, after the slur or death threat, waking with mouths full of grime we may want nothing more than to tear down our signs, retreat from the streets. The carpenters will call this defeat, as if living demands perfection, as if survival is always pretty, but our passion requires no such grace. Let the carpenters champion their closets. Let them have their caskets. For there is no wood that does not burn and we are nothing if not fire.