Do you still look for me in your new girlfriends? Do you still seek my eyes in theirs? Do you still feel my lips when you kiss her and hear my voice when they speak? Did you cut your hair because I loved it so much? Do you still celebrate Tuesday as “*** Night”? Do you still look for me, when you ask them out?

Do you still blame your father for our demise? Do you still think your hands are capable to do as he did? Did you marry her and divorce her because you were afraid of yourself? Do you still talk about our first time? And do you in a negative or a positive light? Are you changing yourself because you think you’ll finally be happy? Or because you won’t look so much like him anymore.... Do you miss me at all?

Do you still feel hate and heartbreak when you hear my name? Do you hear my name when our birthday comes around? Do you take your clothes off because I made you feel *****? Do you still collect lovers and partners like the hundreds of beads you make your jewelry with? Do you still fill your body with healthy choices but unhealthy people?

Do you wish we never happened? Do you miss your bruises because your mother is now dead? Do you hate me for wishing you were free of her when she was still alive? Do you still eat sushi and think of me? Do you still listen to the playlist I made you? Do you still cry that you lost your best friend because of me? Do you wish we had fought our feelings and that you would still be hers? Do you still have the letters that I wrote you? The poems? The drawings? Do you still have that power ranger blanket? Or did you destroy that with the rest of my memories?

Are you happy now?

“I won’t have ***** living in my house”
As if that’s all you’ve said to offend me
Unlucky for you I have a great memory
I have a mental transcript of everything you’ve said to me
17 years of tyranny
Where do I begin?
All the way back to kindergarten
The special ed teacher said she thinks I have dyslexia
You said it’s an excuse for being stupid
That was the first crime of many
You’ve called me worthless, ugly, and unwanted plenty
But actions speak louder than words
You’ve thrown your empty bottles of gloom across the living room
Crime after crime I’ve cleaned it up everytime
3 kids and I’m the only one, whose been “lucky” enough seen your gun
In april of twenty fourteen you burnt my brothers funeral card
Your fist has never hit me quite that hard

My body is a canvas you painted black and blue
Step back at look at your masterpiece, in her rubber-banded shoes
Every day I become more and more like you
If I ever have a daughter dear lord is she *******

Who gives a **** if I’m relatively gay
17 years you’ve lived with me everyday
Also, why ***** plural?
Am I gonna start an army or some ****?
Am I contagious?
I am plenty religious
I could count your sins
You say it hurts your shins to kneel at church so you keep sitting
And ******* on the person that I am
Making him perform this scam
At family parties pretending to be mine
Because my love is a crime
Are you out of your mind?

Its fine, I’m not going to cut my hair
This cross belongs around my neck
You need a reality check
Its 2018!
I am allowed to be seen without a man holding my hand
And protecting me from offensive words
This is defence served 110 pounds
I fell asleep to the sound of a car backfire
‘Call the therapist, this is dire’
Jesus, Mary, do everything you can
There’s a chance she wont be marrying a man
When life doesn’t go as planned just do more drugs
Hit and yell I’ll put in earplugs
But I’m going to push and I’m going to shove
Until you let me fall in love

That word brings me back
to crouching behind my grandma’s couch
listening to my uncle yell at my cousin
that she couldn’t go to her friend’s uncles’ house
just because there were two of them
And I remember realizing
that my family might hurt me
if I ever came out to them

That word brings me back
to 2 am in bed
tears in my eyes
trying to convince myself
that my feelings were real
and hoping that they weren’t

That word brings me back
to walking through the hallway
and listening to other teens
spew hate and slurs
not knowing how much it hurt

That word brings me back
to sitting in a church I had never been in
listening to the pastor preach and yell
about how God hated
and I felt all my future plans of coming out
go down the drain

That word brings me back
to reading hundreds of news stories
about how people like me were killed
just because they were different
and wanted to love and exist
in a way that was different

That word brings me back
to hiding books I wanted to buy
from my parents view
just because the characters
were LGBTQ

That word brings me back
to so many different places
and all that they have in common
is that they cause me pain
so I’m sorry that I don’t think
that slurs can be reclaimed
especially when you still use it
in a derogatory way

She’s shiny. No, not like a diamond, or a new toy, or when you polish a glass just right.

    … Not even quite like a star.

She’s just…

s h i n y.

To call her a beacon of hope, of joy, of anything would be patronizing, would be dehumanizing, maybe even fetishizing and associating any of those words with her makes you cringe, makes you ache with rage at yourself, but -

  She.
  Shines.

She is the agonizing sun in your eyes when you are driving and the sunbeams that feed the flowers in your garden.

both the highlight of your day and also the worst part
for the warmth in your chest, the fire in your heart,


You suppress and deny until you are almost fool enough to believe yourself when you say “i’m not in love, i’m not in love, i’m not in love”
  
She shines

She shines so bright it hurts, but you want it to hurt, you can’t imagine it any other way

So you burn, and you burn alone, and maybe always will, because the words dancing inside you -

“Hi, my name is - ”
“I like your skirt”
“What was the homework for Spanish?”
“Hey! I noticed the scratch down your arm, I also have a cat - actually, I have three”

- die before they reach your tongue.

                            … she’s probably straight, anyway.

As she stares at the stars and you stare at her,
You wonder what she sees in them.
It’s the stars that make her smile like that.
You want to wash your hair with stardust,
Wear a necklace of a shimmering constellation,
Shove entire planets in your eyesockets,
And burst into a girl-supernova
So that maybe, just maybe, she will love you, too.

I am not at fault.
I didn't do anything wrong.
Why am I being treated as though I did?

Stop it with the pity and the shame.
I am not ashamed. I don't need pity.
Especially not yours.

Life is messed up, but I am not.

One in five. one in five. ONE IN FIVE
One in five LGBTQ+ people have been mistreated because of their ****** orientation. It's not that hard to find these statistics. Look it up. Look up anything about LGBTQ+ people and I'm sure you'll find mistreatment.
I'm sure you'll find harm.
I'm sure you'll find that they harm themselves.
Because they feel at fault.
It's not their fault that they feel a common emotion towards another person you, selfish, close-minded..
mmm.

No.
Four in five. four in five. FOUR IN FIVE
Don't talk about it.
The way they were mistreated.
If you don't really get that
If you can't  really fathom that
Almost all of them
Almost every single one of these people that have been mistreated don't even talk about it they don't reach out they don't tell
anyone

NEARLY HALF
of LGBTQ+ people in school are bullied
Are mistreated
Are hurt
Are mocked
Are called names
***
******
***.
In school.
Yeah, bullying happens all the time over stupid ****. All the time. Wearing glasses, looking different, being gay.
I get it.
It happens.
Whatever.
Nearly half.

"72 countries criminalise same-*** relationships ...
The death penalty is either ‘allowed’, or evidence of its existence occurs, in 8 countries
In more than half the world, LGBT people may not be protected from discrimination by workplace law
Most governments deny trans people the right to legally change their name and gender from those that were assigned to them at birth
Between 2008 and 2014, there were 1,612 trans people were murdered across 62 countries - equivalent to a killing every two days
A quarter of the world’s population believes that being LGBT should be a crime"

Oh hey, just some statistics. Isn't that interesting. Isn't it cool to take a step back and check that out. That's pretty crazy huh? Pretty outrageous. But, you know, maybe if you weren't such a
***.

I did nothing
wrong.
I tried to stop it.
I tried.
But how can you stop
Doing
What
Is
Natural.

People are hurting
People are dying
People are being killed
People are killing themselves

Stop it with the pity and the shame.

We are not to blame.

My hair is as curvy
as my body.
Today I straightened
everything out.
I don't think straight suits me

When you are born
with hair this wild
you shouldn't ever
try to tame it.
Do what comes naturally

There is no point
in trying to straighten
something that was meant
to be anything but.
As long as it is you

I say: Do It

Am I in love with you,
or the things that you do?

Because when I look at the sky
and see stars,
I see them fold and collapse,
melting into each other like
drunken bodies,
like moths to the light.

I see them dance across the aqua,
like kids to mothers,
or lover to lover.

I see them die,
fade out,
standing on the edge
of a platform,
screaming for a final chance at love  
before their plummet to
the depths.

I see you.
I know that we exist.

But how can I feel scared
at all,
when I look and see your eyes,

-Are they crying?

As we us fall to the ground,
our bodies becoming weightless,
we are tumbling to our deaths,
We look at each other,
kiss and hug until our
arrival
in our coffin
made for two,

soon to burn up.