Hamish Bell

Hamish Bell (they/he) is a Scottish transmasc who studies politics, philosophy and pancake-making by day and pursues poetry by night. They write on queerness, grief, small town life and whatever else gives them that poetry itch.

Clapham Stabbing: Two Men Injured in Homophobic Attack

In the church, at your funeral

Your brother spoke about how he would

Follow you to the bathroom, at pubs

And clubs and bars,

Just to make sure that you made it back alive.

I’d thought, then, bitter, that bathrooms

Weren’t the issue –

Your bedroom was what we

Should have been looking out for

But two months later,

Two gay men are stabbed

On your high street. Just

For being gay,

And for standing

On the high street.

Just for standing

In a gay club,

Near the gay bathrooms,

Being gay,

On the high street

Near the church, where your brother

Spoke

At your funeral.

There are no words to make this pretty.

But you were –

Under the lights at the music bar next door –

Bull-headed, walking me home

Past midnight in skirts and a corset,

Insisting that you would be fine.

You were not fine. It was, in fact,

Your bedroom

Not the bathrooms,

In the end.

But it kills me to know

Your brother could have told that story

At your funeral –

Near the high street

And the gay club –

All the same.