BLUE (1993) BY DEREK JARMAN
Words by Yooko Peters
Photography by Emma Sywyj
November 2024
Without looking out of the window one can see the way of heaven. The further one goes the less one knows, ignorance is for everyone else. I choose the binder and the gayest shirt I own—blue with velvet white pattern sprawled across a button up. Blue protects white from innocence. Blue drags black with it. Blue is darkness made visible. My hair is too long—I give a name and don’t mention insurance, ensuring I come back in one piece. One more step for God to take, He is unaware of Blue standing in the corner. I’m disordered and respected while my name is thrown in and out of my hands, my body observed without sensitivity even though I’ve laid my shirt down and given my life to be here. She* is well-developed and overweight, behavior cooperative while I’m told I have no choice but to wait and understand. We have always been mistreated, so if anyone gives us the slightest sympathy we overreact with our thanks. I float to the car and look for a coffee shop that costs four hours and my name to take me back home. My shirt carries sterilized air of people with serious problems—at work, at the cinema, on marches and beaches, in churches on their knees, running, flying, silent or shouting protest. While I wonder which bathroom-spatula to take. I call one more time to hear the deliverance that dances with the card she* was given, for Blue there are no boundaries or solutions.
October 2025
I've played this scenario back and forth each hour of the day for the last six years. This month it was my man* birthday‐twelve months on T and over a year being out (mostly). The war rages across the newspapers and through the ruined streets I put an ofrenda for grandparents—two sides of ANceSToRs and a wagging candle. Three months post-op I slept over but I haven't worn a bra in weeks or had to close the ai-guitar-shirt in front of the mirror. A prison of the soul, your heredity, your education, your vices and aspirations, your qualities, your psychological world. I've changed my name, my age, and my gender to cross the world with the least weeks possible I have to shave my face back to front, and inside out every so often. I woke up at 5am with a 6am appointment 3 hours away—maybe 4— they told me not to bother showing up. There is a photo in the newspaper this morning of refugees leaving [ ]. They look out of time. I white-knuckled the wheel, laughed—my boobs fluttered, sterile rooms intensed, closeted and frightened by my sexuality, the saint of all who are at their wit's end. Like the hate crime I was consequenced for, the nightmare of shoes on inside. My sinewy hair flowing in waves around my body circles my vulgar chest—8 more months before surgery to have is not eternal—the fear that engenders the beginning the middle and the end.
