I sent you a letter.

I'm sorry that I didn't just say it out loud,
but I couldn't look at you as our faces mirrored each other's heartbreak.

Yours then mine.


I couldn't be there as you struggled to give me an answer,
couldn't just tell you without giving you space.

I wish I could talk to you,
that my mouth won't fill with silence when it is opened.

That I'll stop wrapping the silence around me, desperate for its warmth in freezing days.


Yet still,

I sent you this letter, dear mother, because the waves held my face under your turbulence of expectations and the currents needed to change.

I didn't want to drown.


Forgive me for this letter, dear father, I know you prefer ignorance but it only leads to hate and anyway,

mother always says there's nothing you love more than your children and I didn't want to become a stranger.


I know this is hard, but I wish it wasn't.

I wish you'd paint your face with my colors, cheer from the stands, celebrate my existence as it is.


Still, I don't expect you to understand it,
I know it's foreign and new in your eyes.


I don't want you to tell me you still love me and that your love would always be unconditional,

I want to never have questioned it at all.


I don't want your sympathy.

There's nothing to be sad about, nothing to fix, nothing to mourn.

The future you visioned for me was never real, you never asked me anyway.


I don't want your acceptance.

It's just blank pages and silent mouths, I want your support.

The world is sharp and I just want to know you'll be there to clean away the blood.


I had to tell you because whenever I thought of who I am and heard your voice carried in the wind, I flinched and tensed as if you could look into my mind.


I needed to tell you because I am tired of hiding away flags and pins and scarfs,
bite my tongue around a joke,
overthink every passing comment that falls from your mouth.


I had to tell you because most of all I needed an answer.


So now,

please,

just write me back.