A Million Quiet Revolutions by Robin Gow

Author:Robin Gow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

[Image of a boy holding a needle:

The needle is huge, like a giant glinting saber.]

[Image of a boy plunging the needle

into another boy, into his chest.

Blood trickles from the wound:

a crimson ribbon.]

TESTOSTERONE DREAMS I

You (Aaron): Nothing could make either

of us more a man than the other

You (Aaron): if testosterone is all

that makes someone a man,

then what would be the point?

TESTOSTERONE DREAMS II

Me (Oliver): Maybe I’ll be able to decide after we go

You (Aaron): if you want to try taking

testosterone or not?

Me (Oliver): yeah

You (Aaron): Maybe you can ask

the other soldiers’ opinions

Me (Oliver): I just might!

BATTLE OF MONMOUTH

Me (Oliver): so i’ve been researching reenactments and

one battle right after the troops stayed at Valley Forge

was the Battle of Monmouth

Me (Oliver): I was thinking maybe our soldiers

might have fought in that

maybe they marched there together

You (Aaron): Where’s that?

Me (Oliver): It’s like a whole festival!

You (Aaron): WHERE?

Me (Oliver): Oh, sorry didn’t see that

It’s in New Jersey!

it’s like the perfect time right in June!

You (Aaron): And people camp out?

I’m sorry I know it’s dumb I’m just

all worried we’re actually doing this.

Me (Oliver): Yeah and it’s not too expensive

to sign up to reenact.

Me (Oliver): We don’t have to

I know it would be hard to figure out.

You (Aaron): I don’t know if I know enough

to be our soldiers.

You (Aaron): I don’t know if I know them

as much as you do.

Me (Oliver): Enough?

You (Aaron): You know like

I just want to do them justice.

I don’t know if I’m even like the people who fought.

You (Aaron): Were there even

Puerto Rican people

at this battle?

Me (Oliver): I’m sure there could have been!

Also … just because historians didn’t write about it

doesn’t mean there weren’t.

We get missed by history.

I have to believe going to the reenactment

is like honoring people like us

who aren’t in paintings and history books.

You (Aaron): Hmm I actually kind of like that

I’m gonna do some more research tonight also.

Me (Oliver): Me too!! You’re excited, aren’t you?

You (Aaron): Ugh, yeah I am.

MAYBE

Me (Oliver):

I know this might not all work out

Maybe, even after the trip, we’ll grow apart

Maybe we won’t tell our new friends in college the story of how we got our names

Maybe we’ll forget each other, slowly, not all at once

Maybe we won’t hold hands again or share cheap chocolates

Maybe we’ll get lost on the trip to the battlefield in the rolling fields of corn and soybeans

Maybe our words too will get lost there, becoming paint in our mouths

Maybe we will have to communicate by making pictures, our faded love stamped into canvas

Maybe we’ll never know if trans people existed in the Revolution like how I imagine our soldiers

Maybe we’ll see them reflected in more stories but never how we understand them

Maybe they’re make-believe

Maybe the idea is just meant to comfort us, to comfort me

Maybe I love history and I want it to help me understand myself

But despite it all I want you to remember

that we existed and we loved each other so much

that we existed and maybe someday us existing

will give someone else hope

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