I thought I’d be smited, right then and there

The red gravel spilling into the dugout

Was now plastic aquarium rocks

I was in a bowl, drowning underwater

It felt like drowning a lot of the time I was out there

Mostly because I was easily distracted and couldn’t play softball for ****

When Paige kissed me, I cried

Now, those pieces of red dirt
were a hellfire beneath me.

My religious upbringing was the kind that’s secretly stifling. The kind that permeates so deep that to act against it is to act against yourself.

This generational inherited catholic guilt.

The idea that I should be unimportant and unassuming and sinning was important in a bad way.

I knew I would only get one trip to the bathroom per service, I planned it carefully each week

So that it would take the most time

So I could stand in the great hall and twiddle my thumbs

As we were  forbidden to re-enter the chapel while the father was speaking

I am forbidden from many things as a child.

I’m forbidden from tears as if I’m not important enough to have them.

I am not stone and my tears are not blood. I am not a miracle. I am not a sight to behold. I am not a message from god.

I am not the prophetic ****** Mary in my mother’s dreams the night a relative passes.

I am not allowed to love without meaning.

When Paige kissed me I cried.

I had to tell everyone in t-ball that I was 5 when I was only 4 because my mother wanted me to start a year early.

I hid the sign up forms they gave us at school each year, but my mom would register me in person.

Every year she’d tell me, just one more year, this can be the last one.

This went on for nine years.

After I made my first communion. I asked to quit

I had to study five more years to make my confirmation sacrament, effectively promising I’d stay in the church,
before my mother would let me leave.

The irony was lost on her.

When Paige kissed me I cried.

What a cruel way to hurt someone. This was worse than the tripping, the taunting, the terrorizing.

Her tenderness.

I often wondered why she treated me as she did—I was already an ugly duckling, a left fielder, a loser.

Her mom was the coach, and she was the best on the team. They all listened to her, which meant they all hated me.

She’d call me a **** and pull my hair.

When paige kissed me, I cried

Why couldn’t it have been anyone else, why not natalie johnston

I never told anyone else, I decided it wasn’t my secret to share.

But I am tired of keeping secrets of what people who hate me did to my body.

Retrospectively, it’s easy to try to be flattered. I’m sure it was hard and weird for her to have those feelings.

I’m sure she expressed them as well as she could.

But I didn’t want Paige to kiss me.

I WANTED Paige to stop calling me a ****.

I wanted her get hit in the face with a softball

and I wanted it to shove her nose into her brain.

And I wanted her to die.

And

I prayed for her to die.

My fingers dance across your skin
and small constellations I trace;
There rests Aries on your collar,
and Andromeda frames your face.

Though you’ve labeled these stars a flaw,
I can’t stop myself from thinking
Aphrodite herself did bring
these small constellations to being.

the moon is a lesbian,
which i know because she has
kissed every inch of my body
more often than any lover
i've ever known.

i have watched the way
she kisses the ocean
and guides her gently home,
have seen her face reflected with love
in the ever-changing sparkling surface of the sea,
and i don't know any other word
to describe a love like that.

the day we smoked a joint in the woods
and then walked eight miles in the rain
to gas station coffee,
we passed two other gas stations on the way,
but you were holding my hand and
i didn't want it to stop.
you said
"you're beautiful"
and i said
~~~~
because you were the most remarkable
person i had ever seen,
leaned up against the hood of a stranger's car,
smoking a cigarette like a lesbian james dean.

you'd call yourself
"lesbian" sixteen times before breakfast
until it stopped sounding like venom
and started to sound like a prayer,
because how could i ever look at
love like this and feel anything
but holy?
my new church was the woods
by the river,
and i learned to worship
at the altar of your body.
you took me in your arms and you said,
"baby,
you're beautiful,"
and i told you i loved you
because beautiful had never
meant anything to me
except that i had something
people could take.
i heard "beautiful" from your lips and it sounded
like a blessing.

the moon is a lesbian because
she knows how to love without taking,
i have scarcely loved a man
who has learned how to love without taking,
that is not to say that no man
can love without taking,
but it is a skill that is learned
through a grief
that i have shared with every
queer woman i have ever met.

when you kissed me in the attic,
it was not the first time
i had been kissed,
but it was the first time that a touch
felt like a gift and not a punishment,
and it was the first time i understood
why people write love songs.
i wanted to write you a love song,
but after a lifetime afraid of my own voice,
all i could sing you were hymns.
not because i had made you an idol,
but because your hands on my body
made me feel clean for the first time.

the moon is a lesbian because
the night i stumbled out of
the apartment of the man
who only loved me when
he thought he could keep me,
blood on my lips and nowhere to go,
the moon kissed my fingertips
and she said,
"baby,
what took you so long?
welcome home."

Silence is


LOUD

When no words
Are spoken

I found perfection
In every flaws you possessed
In every faults
And every little mistakes you did

I found peace
Within your chaos
Tranquility
In your storm
And a passageway
Of love
In the cracks of your broken heart

- Juju