Broken glass rained like confetti
on the night of the Stonewall Riot,

and atop a glowing lamp post,
beautiful with her dolphin smile,
it was Marsha P. Johnson
who threw the first brick.

a warranted departure from her
philosophy of “pay it no mind,”
sparking a revolt
when the bar tab
came out to be way more
than just the drinks she ordered

That debt she paid, she paid in full:
a broken high heel,
a billy club to the rib,
the chaos of a tipping point
reached at two in the morning.

When she
and her friends
(and her old lovers)
(and the strangers she’d flirt with
but would never charm)
burst through those doors and

into the streets
into our offices,
into our classrooms
into our view

they catapulted us down the aisle
where we’d stand together before a decorated arch
and calmly declare our relationship
in terms never before seen:

A marriage
afforded the same rights and obligations
as our parents’ before us
and their parents’ before them.

A link in the long line of their history,
the first fruits to be officially named together
on the same branch of the family tree.

I vowed,
then you vowed.

and together when we walked from the altar,
confetti rained like broken glass,

Each of our rings
a societal terror
gleaming with one demand:

Respect.

Our everyday forward
its own quiet revolution.