Juliette McCarthy

Because we are beautiful

Because when my tears fall, they follow a familiar path, 
One carved into my bones like a rushing river does a canyon, 
I am no longer here, I tell her.
I am in the mirror, I tell her.
Harvesting fears, the feller;
Dripping red, the state of Wisconsin burns a hole in my TV.
I look away at the beautiful imprint of a rainforest tree.
“Juliette, squint closer and closer, to see.”
I always wonder if it’s what others perceive,
Or if I’m the only one that can make the shape on the ground fit me?
Is that why I chose the name with two t’s?
Or was it always in the leaves, tea?
 
I’m not too much older today than the day I wrote that trans girls are rainforest trees. Gorgeous, resolute, uncompromising, we often stick above the canopy. Because I am beautiful, I can see violent deforestation, suffocating climate change, all out of a need for those to assert their dominant masculinity, to prove their destructive ideology in its “superiority”. Because I am beautiful, you will see my roots in the pathways that led you here. Because I am beautiful, I stand tall sheltering the younger trees. Because I am beautiful, I am my own place of refuge. 
 
And if they knock me down, do not fear because I am beautiful. My beauty is not something they are capable of taking even if it costs me my corpse. Because I am not beautiful in a vacuum of time and space, because I am beautiful with you.