Why do you care so much are you gay?
A question I remember often being asked.
How illogical it is to assume your child
will be anything other than straight,
to be raised on the belief that other
was either a phase or a sin.
Maybe I just care about people as human beings -
or maybe there was something more to it.
How wrong it felt to push my sexuality in a corner
and pretend it did not exist.

Once I pushed past that,
the feeling was surreal.
Finally embracing your true self
is a feeling you never forget.
I did not choose this;
To fall in love with words, personalities, feelings,
never confined to gender,
but I have accepted it.
That is what is most liberating.
I feel free.
~ I.M

It feels like drowning.
Endless waves of emptiness fill your body.
You gasp for air as everyone around you watches,
but no one makes a sound.
You try to swim to the surface,
so desperate for a quick breath.
The grasp it has on you is too strong - you sink.
You’re left to drown in an ocean of despair;
your blue lips inhale words of self-hatred like oxygen.
Your instincts tell you to kick, to jump, to fight,
hopelessly searching for any bit of relief.
You can no longer hold your own breath.
You suffocate.
- what depression feels like// I.M

The melanin in our skin,
leaves open a gateway for hate.
It is where violence and bigotry breed
at the hands of those meant to protect.
Was our skin color God’s mistake?

What is fed to us as seeds,
grows into fires filled with rage as we mature.
The cycle is inevitable, at best,  
foreshadowing the entirety of our lives.
Placing those sprouted through hate into an inescapable prison,
filled with fires which cannot be extinguished.
Warranting these fires to burn within us, was God’s only mistake.
We will not be put out.
I.M