112 NOVEMBER 2023 beacon. noun. a fire or light set up in a high or prominent position as a warning, signal, or celebration. 1. Warning Hear the alarm. It sounds like books doused in accelerant. Like “don’t say gay” sharpied on silver duct tape. Like white supremacy taking to the mic at your local school board meeting. Hear the alarm. It sounds like an insurrection. Like Proud Boys huddled together with semiautomatic rifles outside the Capitol. It sounds like an AR-15 with an extended clip in the hands of a demon. Hear the alarm. It sounds like fragile white masculinity shattering into shards of glass like an empty vase dropped from the sky. It sounds like the word “groomer” in the mouth of every so-called Christian mother who is more afraid of a drag queen than a Nazi. It sounds like young men marching with tiki torches toward the main entrance of your school. Hear the alarm. It sounds like a thousand dog whistles blowing at the same time. It sounds like the doors of a Planned Parenthood slamming shut, leaving an empty medical building as a symbol of our hatred toward women and their bodies. It sounds like Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with cis men. It sounds like another lockdown in my son’s preschool, his little head poking out from under the table as the sheriffs sweep the building in tactical gear. Disclaimer: this curriculum has a warning label. It says, keep away from children so they don’t interrupt the design. It says, see teacher as poison control / as emergency responder / as crisis caregiver. Listen to them when they write, “YOU don’t know my sorrow, YOU don’t know my PAIN.” Listen when they tell us, this warning is not a metaphor. Look outside. It is literally burning. Listen to the alarm blaring. It sounds like mama whispering warnings in my ears. I must protect my grace— oppression and discrimination I am destined to face it is rooted in my veins, laced with my ancestors’ pain. Hear the alarm. If you listen close, it is not all doom. It sounds like a song in the key of vulnerability. I know it is my soul’s duty to be the vessel, this beacon of hope, for these young men of color for white folx who don’t understand they must get free, too, that their humanity is tied up in this shit, too, they need to know their souls are at stake. 2. Signal See the signal. It looks like a bonfire of books burning, words becoming ashes between our fingertips. Sentences aflame. Truth, alight. This signal is a trail of smoke from a classroom engulfed in the silent voices of tomorrow. This signal is an exit sign glowing through the haze and smoke, so many years spent gasping for air with the fear that I’ll choke. This signal sounds like a call for resistance, for fists, for any means necessary to refuse our death softly, but to go out blazing and unholy, tossing the tear gas back. Hear the signal. It is a rally for truths we shouldn’t even have to affirm. It’s for my 5-year-old daughter on my shoulders at the protest, yelling at the top of her lungs for a world she will inherit that is flooded with our sins. Hear the signal. It sounds like levees breaking from the surge and people abandoned shouting from rooftops. Our Lives Are Worth Celebrating