BIO
Cee Chávez is a queer, nonbinary, Chicanx empath whose writings explore themes of gender, sexuality, identity, family, trauma, and to their own chagrin - love. They are a teacher by occupation and a student of life. When Cee is not teaching or writing, they are probably community organizing with the Latinx LGBTQ+ grassroots non profit they are a board member of, traveling, or cuddling with their adorable pit mix.
Still
after “One Last Poem For Richard” - Sandra Cisneros
I always imagined that after the wars
abandoned loves are made to feel like, awards
might someday be offered. We’ve all found ourselves survivors
afterall, of a war (or more) in which the degradations,
piled on too high, made for a special kind of failure.
One in which there must be a purpose: Hasn’t something
been learned from all of this? Pain
is never linear; and love for me, has always been a complex disaster
with a lesson at the eventual end. I silently understood the lesson to be my well
-deserved award, compensation for my troubles - water
after the longest drought. Then, without a clatter, you
appeared. I dreamt of words causing a well within me once.
A woman who would touch without hands. Upon knowing me, instantly remember.
From miles away, you cast shadows. Touching myself drunk,
I trace. My fingers become yours in the dark. All the things I fear to admit
in the brightness of day you pull out by night. Parts left from the wars, kamikaze
and raw, ask to be seen and held. Those parts of us ask to be still.