Zie is Here.

Leslie.
I cannot speak this sadness over the loss of someone I will never meet.
I read your words cross-legged on the floor
Of the first room that ever showed me community--
This community, our Rainbow.
My heart shattered for Jess,
For you,
Knowing that every word of this novel was true.
My hands wrung the paperback cover curled
As your femme worried your shirt collar:
"How am I ever going to get these stains out?"
I waited for the butch who would come home to me bloodied,
And hoped I would never meet hir.
I swooned at the literary purr of your motorcycle
And waited for my broad back to lean into.
In your words, I saw the first version of myself
That I ever wanted to be:
A fearless protector, who knows she is comfortable as a womyn-loving-womyn.

Leslie, you were the first to paint me a picture of the world I was going to live in,
And you did it with your words.
In a sense, you were the first butch I ever fell for.
You revealed to me that
Butches are there for loving.

I caught myself crying in the bathroom mirror after I heard of your passing.
I felt the surge of an enveloping hug move through me, and I know,
Zie is here.
In every one of us who remembers hir,
Who respects hir,
Who values Leslie's work,
Zie is here.
Zie has an impact as far-reaching as zie could have hoped,
And maybe farther. Certainly farther than I know.
Leslie's influence will never stop living.
Zie is here.