In the window a rather large galactic flutterby, its proboscis sticky with swallowed stars, caught up in a honeycomb of, ok , Dark Matter, and itself carrying, their having become attached via some atmospheric goo to the creature’s pheromonal stomata, the planet earth and all its bejeweled citizens.

I open your geography.
To find a portal to the blue love.
A swell rises,
I catch it, float.
You moan across the way.
My breath catches
As soundings resonate.
Between two deeps -
But across what space?

My feet are wet, some tide.
laps at my toes.
Little birds run to and fro.
Where my footprints fill with.
the new sand.
Stripped bare
I dive between waves.
One crashes over my head.
Between waves
Between oceans.
I stand
On two feet
The sand is sucked from beneath my toes
I tilt back.
And fall head up.
Tasting salt water
Stinging my eyes
I sputter and float
Face down into a bowl of stars.
Am I held by oceans resounding
Or the tension of two surfaces?

Rise, fall
Underneath, the ocean
Underneath, the sea.
Mingling seas,
I float.
Resonance and tension,
I float.
Between waves.
I float so easily,
I float so easily,
I float so easily.
Between waves.

We cannot fall.
We share water.
We drink from a common place.
And go home.

When I mentioned this to my mother (how that came up in conversation I do not remember), she told me that when Sam was born “the doctors had to make a decision.”

With middle school came puberty and with puberty came changes. While the most of the rest of his teammates became more angular and awkward, Sam became more soft and round.

Along with his genital differences, Sams changes were seen as an opportunity for taunting and crude ridicule from his testosterone-laden colleagues. I won’t repeat the words, I’m sure that you will have heard them, although perhaps not with the vernacular mispronunciation of pseudo-scientific categories I heard.

Things went on. In high school Sam began acting out a bit, getting in fights and trying to out macho his persecutors.

For his 18th birthday, his parents bought him a motorcycle. A powerful one. An impressive machine. After some Saturday night of rejection and humiliation, Sam revved it up as high as it would go and drove straight into a bridge abutment. He did not survive.

I don’t know enough about medical knowledge and practices in the rural 1950s south to judge whatever decisions were made. But I do know that they were not Sam’s decisions. Sam made different ones and we are all the poorer for the options that availed him.

Let’s not re-create through law and policy the losses produced by ignorance and lack of knowledge.

@online{2023,
  author = {, bhangakhana},
  title = {Sam - a Pride Month Remembrance},
  date = {2023-06-03},
  url = {https://acmesemiotics.com/posts/2025-10-09-sam},
  langid = {en}
}

Back straight

Reflection in the water

Canoe

Curved back

The sky in your eyes

Canoe

Straight ahead

The mystery prow

Lean one way, now another

Yellow spatterdock, white water-lily

Yellow water-lily, American lotus

Nuphar advena, Nymphaea odorata,

Nymphaea mexicana, Nelumbo lutea

Floating, a blossom

On the surface, the sky

Curve back, straight ahead

Lean one way, now another

Advena, odorata, mexicana, lutea.

Nuphar, Nelumbo,

Nymphaea,

Nymphaea.

Stars in bright daylight

Where is the light?

Otters frolic near the shore

How far the water, how far the land?

A blind turtle surfaces

Where the light, where the water?

Diving, diving

to the mirrored bottom

Otter feet to otter feet,

Turtlehead to turtlehead

Starlight to sun

Where the one, where the other?

It’s a difficult junction, Topography complex, Topology convoluted. Get there take the watery path, Nexus of liquids.

Swamp water, reptile mind, Slow pulse of tropical sun, The tongue flicks to taste the direction. Igauna swan dive, head south. Lie on your back, float down that river, Chuck that harpoon, rock that little man in the boat.

In the warmth of the ocean, Pheromones stream along, Trace molecular paths; A multi-dimensional crossroad, A network of feeling, mapped by that flick, Out, in to the roof of the mouth.

Newly born tastebuds unwrithe, Stretch, Envelop nodular/taste/round, Assimilate in clasping toroidal pulses, Signal to distant appendages, “South, south.”

Iguana dance the bivalve, baby, the new hot glide, The bearded oyster cult’s. got a brand new tune.

Smelts and slippery dicks in brine, Tiger mussel, green-stripe, deveined angels, Gooey duck, earth clam, all in a lemon grass broth.

My head jerks (what’s that smell?), Flash of silvery scale, Astroglide in blue, “Grab it with both hands and push, matey,” This one’s likely to get away.

A gentle nudge, a course correction, An intimation from some distant stroking. Perhaps I’ll just eat in. Tonight.