i dreamed of a boy
with eyes as blue as the pool we swam in.
and his soft blond hair—
he looked just like me, if i had been born normal.

i kissed him hard, hard enough to bruise,
hard enough to make him gasp—
he pulled away and whispered
“i’ve never been kissed like i was being punched.”

and i looked in our pool-blue eyes
and i pet our soft blond hair
and with a whispered apology i leaned in to kiss him again,
gentle this time.

1 i found the book of our genesis in a box in my closet with the pile of bones that used to be our skeletons.

2 pages of psalms scrawled in the heartsick blood of our high-school romance, fever-pitched and eating each other alive— the behemoth and the leviathan

3 and the trumpets sang revelation.

4 matthew, mark, luke, and john. you were the last, my first, the twenty-seventh in our new testament to love.

5 until. ‘man shall not lie with man,’ you said, and you kissed me goodbye as a brother and walked into your new life on the straight and narrow. it was the first time i’d heard you quote scripture.

6 my religion left me two years ago, but here i stand on the cusp of prayer, seeking the strength to send this epistle away on its final exodus.