I didn’t speak in fear of saying the wrong things,
Letting my insecurities build layered rings
To protect me from the vagrant eyes of society;
For years I grew up a silent and impervious tree
That feared the men who wouldn’t love me.

But then no, no, then you suddenly came along,
Full of mystery and conversation
In those Watergate lips and eyes like Nixon;
I should never have trusted your boyish conviction
When we met in September and you said ‘Hi Steven”
Like I was the most important person to you,
And how I downloaded a texting app just to
Write “Hi” back to you everyday and how you eventually told me
To change my last name to yours—you made a deep incision
Through every shell of skin I provisioned
For ordinary men like you.

But this is not a love story because
You were just an ordinary man
And I was just an extraordinary fool.
I thought we could drift forever lost
In the desert winds of my dearest dreams—
But love was a mirage and you were an oasis;
I took a sip from the shadowed pool at every cost
And ended up with a mouth full of sand.

This is not a love story because I didn’t know
Two guys could just be friends if they talked to each other like brothers
Because whenever I did, I was called a ***
For trying to pick up where my father left off,
For ignoring me my whole entire life because he cared more about his drug deal
Than his own family.

This is not a love story because you were a guy
And I was too obsessed with being what I wanted other people to see;
I didn’t want to be happy if it meant
Giving up the sweet internal peace that came with being
One hundred percent normal in America’s eyes.

This is not a love story because
It wasn’t written in the Bible.

This is not a love story because we live in a nation
Where having a crush on a guy labels me with damnation,
Where we teach our boys that love is only beautiful if it is in a woman
And that those who see otherwise are sin-ridden;
So many tongues tied to the tips of our teeth
Our nation’s sons and daughters beaten til the love runs red in a river of their tears;
These gender roles wring us out dry and drown us in a shadowed pool of fears.

I can proudly say I was in love with a guy,
But I won’t say it was for the right reasons.
I was blinded by the reality that maybe, just maybe,
Having intimate conversations with a man wouldn’t label me.
And it never will, not now, not ever,
Because I am not an ordinary man—
I am peculiar.
I am not yesterday
Because I am tomorrow night.
I am not a vagrant hiding in a black wood behind the skull
Because I am a redwood, rooted and full
With my outstretched arms soaring high into the sky
Because love is a blind sun that shines over us all,
Making our walls look as small
As the rubble when they fall and fall.