wildscape. literary journal

Banned Blessing
by Emily Bruhl

After PEN America’s Banned Words List

Long live affirming care, first of all, medicine that restored my love’s biggest smile, and long live the half-broken belonging we’ve found in our red town. We’re hanging sweaters and polos in the community closet, sorting by size, and I think, long live diversity. How expression delivered us. I am female, fragile, wishing warmth to all growing things, bailing hate by the teaspoonful. A blessing for all immigrants, a candle for Justice40, a new love lullaby for every lesbian. Long live men who have sex with men. A bundle of carnations for everyone nonbinary, noncitizen, non-conforming, tied with rainbow ribbon. Oppression drove us here too, but I don’t want to dwell on that just now. I want to untangle these wire hangers from one another. I want to wish an epipen for everyone with peanut allergies. I want pronouns, I want grammar, I want queer grandmothers. I want finally racial justice, even here in our Confederate colors-flying town. God give us safe drinking water with our daily bread. Aren’t we hanging these clothes in a church, after all? This church that married us just last year, with a trans flag fluttering pink and blue. I wish funding for the understudied. I wish vaccines. I wish wind power. I wish a sunflower, big as your head, for every woman. A toast, long life, a blessing pulled from my top shelf, and until then these secondhand sweatshirts, these hangers, free hair dye if you want it, bowties and brand new sneakers still in the plastic. Until then, we’ll walk home across the empty parking lot, checking over our shoulders beneath the streetlights.

about the author // Emily Bruhl