Behind a giggle and a smile, she's been hiding all the time, they make a joke  she never spoke, the fear of being judged, by the people she really loved, it hurt her too deep, so this to herself she would keep.

The day it all changed, created a great feeling of shame, showing who she was, became one of her flaws, said it wasn't her but yet she couldn't find a cure, for something so wrong, this can't be were she belongs.

They weren't meant to care, their feelings not afraid to share, the feeling of disgust, but in them she tried to trust, do they accept it or really reject it , she feels she should have kept it.

She wasn't alone though, that quickly began to show , because all of her friends they already know, a call away , in theirs she had to stay , the normality was there, these girls they would never care.

The support began to rise, along with a little surprise, at the start she may have been ashamed but all that suddenly changed, the pride she can show , now they all know , her happiness at the centre which began to represent her.

My hands shake as I place a letter on the kitchen counter
My heart beats fast as I leave and lock the door behind me
My legs tremble as I go down the stairs and I almost fall
I text my best friend "done".

I sit on the school stairs, waiting
Butterflies in my stomach fly around
Not butterflies, fireflies
Fireflies, burning me inside with anxiety

The phone vibrates
"I've read it and I'm proud of you. Our parents are reading now and they say they love you no matter what"
Acid kills the fireflies and everything calms down around me
I did it.

I dream about writing you a love poem
One that is not misted over.
One that is not about him
But you, my beloved,
Because you are the only thing that I have ever wanted and I am tired of being so shy.

But this is hard.
This is even harder than  I thought it would be.
I am staring at the her at the end of my first sentence and trying to figure out how it will sound when it finally breaks free from lips.
I imagine it will coat my ******* strange new liberation and we will both rejoice.

 I refuse to write of you equivocally
And blend you into a neutral they
Or let yet another poem fall to chagrin.
I will not let shame cast shadows on our glorious love
No declararion of the truth could ever be an aberration.

So I write this love poem to you.
I do not scribble you deep into the binding or dust you lightly across my untruthful words.
I want to stain these pages with the red ink with our love.
You are not my secret to keep anymore.
You are the color I want to paint the sky.

I am fuming about the world I am so upset with people who think their beliefs entitles them to hurt innocent people or worse their children I am tired of people thinking they have some sort of right to tell us that it’s not love we are fighting we are fighting with all our might to transcend over 2000 miles while at the same time trying to keep hate from other people at bay we have been together almost two years we have learned and grown together we have battled distance and illness and tragedy we have committed to each other what more information do you need to know it’s love oh is it for one of us to have a ***** because here’s news for you I can get one of those online I can get one of those from a doctor because *** is merely a quirk of skin and chemicals and gender is all in our heads and if you would rather base love off of genitals than feelings I think you need to take a good long look at yourself and your god because if he is so shallow as to dictate love by X’s and Y’s then **** your god I am not going to try and please you I do not owe you to cater to your hurtful and hateful beliefs anymore

let me tell you it was taught by your messiah to keep your piety to yourself and to love everyone you can’t tell me that god made me this way and then turn around and claim oh no I am messed up that is hypocritical that is not a religion that I can respect and you are a shame to those who actually try and follow this faith, I can admit that much that there are those who do it right and I thank them but also keep in mind that religion is a human cultural construct and it has been separated from law for a reason because it is recognized that belief is individual and cannot be used to control masses since that causes empires to topple so why are we listening to the heretic fanatics claiming that my love is wrong when I don’t even believe in that god I don’t even believe he exists I don’t believe in heaven and hell and even if I did why the **** do you care so much about MY damnation if I am going to hell I honestly don’t give a single **** I would rather go to hell than spend my time here alive and breathing in misery without her what about that do you not understand

my life is more important than whatever afterlife there may be because I KNOW what’s happening now I know what it’s like to live and I won’t hinge my happiness on what YOU think is wrong and will happen to me my beliefs will dictate my outcome and I can tell you right now that you are wrong to think love could ever hurt anyone your hate is going to spawn your ticket to the hell you believe in while I revel in knowing that love is a universal truth and love is never wrong and I am not scared to love her because something that opened my soul so profoundly cannot be wrong I planned on being alone forever until I met her and your obsession with reproductive organs are not what I will make my choices off of

I think our similarities are so many blessings I love her curves I love her voice I love how our bodies match and our minds get it there are no barriers on gender there is only knowing there is only understanding my issues are her issues and that connects us on a fundamental level that I don’t know how I could ever be so comfortable with a man I have a deep deep reverence for women that resounds to my core and how you could think that is anything less than achingly beautiful is astounding but for all this I will not pine for the approval of a stranger if you do not know me than keep your ******* opinions to yourself and let me love her in peace and if you are someone we care for then the least you can do is love us and let us be and rejoice in our happiness we do not affect you in any form so why would you go out of your way to hurt us

I should not have to hold her while she cries about wishing she could hug her mother I have never wanted children yet I know more about unconditional love than that woman does or apparently her god does the fact is I would never scare her as much as they have I would never make her cry like I have seen her do all I want is to love her with all my heart but by a simple fact of nature my loving her rains down hate and all this is not something I should have to carry.

Why do you frown upon me?
The disgust your features hold,
I am the one who has been there,
The one who has helped you,
And now,
I am but a mere outcast,
Lost and forgotten,
Hidden in a closet so deep,
Where my greatest secret I must keep.

You force me out,
But only to tear me apart.
You don't hear my pain,
Only see the cover of a so deep and emotional book.
Am I insane!?
Am I the one who is wrong?
Am I the one who has been the judge?
And held the grudge that Towards which lucifer himself would show dismay?

The cries from you,
Emotionally pathetic.
The cries from me,
Eternal and hectic,
I am the one who is hurt!
Why do you shed tears at my pain,
And not help me through my dark and evil sin,
Which religion so heavily attacks.

I have a confession,
So deep and dark in the eyes of society,
Yet something I perceive to be so light and acceptable,
This secret the closet can no longer hold,
So of it come out I must.

He's found himself in the closet
After he lost to himself in a game of tic-tac-toe
And tied his lobster bib tightly
Then hid his cheat sheet, for the pop quiz he knew was soon to come

It's curtains for her
She let the cat out of the bag
And now she's up **** creek with ****** for paddles to go **** herself with
Right in the birth canal

Then we'll auction off the ******
We'll pass them off as European defibrillators
Maybe some extremist will want them
If we spew out enough mindless dribble

The All Time ****-Show is about to begin
We have
The Chronic Masturbater
The Hypochondriac
And The Pathological Liar

It was either sometime yesterday
Or sometime tomorrow
Or was it sometime today?
That you were all going to make fun of the boy with the cleft lip down at the laundromat?

Out of the three of you The Pathological Lair sticks out like a sore thumb
I can tell he was the runt of the litter
Who always bites off more than he can chew

I see the Hypochondriac has convinced himself he has eczema  
He rattles off all his symptoms
Inordinate filibustering  

Now there's the Chronic Masturbater
He looks like he's over the hill
He's only twenty one
But the blue circles under his eyes and the deep defined lines on his forehead denote his inelegant aging

I sign all your lives away in my horrible cursive
And now you belong to the ragtag trigger-happy posse of gun-jumpers
My billfold his happily filled
So I must go do some reconnaissance
Spy on those who have quit their day jobs
The fish out of water

You must find that thing that really rolls off the tongue with a nice ring to it
******!
*******!
*******?!
....*******?

No...
Go hang youself with dental flossed you home-schooled fool

Indentured servants we're just an after thought

The yellow, early evening sun feels heavy and warm on my legs.
Like a cat curled up to enjoy a small nap,
It rests on my pink and rainbow blanket.
My mother snores in the old blue chair next to me,
******* in worry and exhaustion and the scent of basil,
Oblivious to the small-town sounds of birds and cars and children playing,
Unaware that her daughter is something she claims to not understand.

"Pansexuality, honestly, just sounds
Horrible,"
She had told me.
"I don't understand pansexuality and gender-fluid and stuff,"
She said,
The car sliding smoothly over the highway under grey skies.
I tried to explain, but I was swamped in
Confusion.
"Well...there are more than two genders, like being gender-fluid and agendered and bi-gendered and third-gendered......
And pansexual people like all of those genders."
"That's what I can't understand. I mean, I kinda get the concept, but..." Her voice trails away like blue cigarette smoke, still deadly even after it has dissipated into the clouds.
I feel like I'm choking on it, raw pink lungs tightening and swelling, forcing yellow stars before my eyes,
Not able to explain the way
I don't care what you identify as,
I only care about love.
My mother's grandmother didn't know that non-straight people existed.
My mother's mother didn't know that bisexual people existed.
My mother doesn't believe that more than two genders exist,
Or know that I find all of them attractive.
But she had already dropped the subject,
Instead filling the awkward lull with discussions of
Colleges and books she's reading and and what my younger sister is doing in school.
I could feel my soul bubbling up behind my lips,
Pink and yellow and blue,
I wanted to tell her to stop and listen.
I wanted to tell her to be quiet,
And to be accepting,
And to try to understand.
I wanted to tell her
'I'm pansexual.
There.
Now you know.
Would you have said that it was horrible and that you can't understand?
That, in essence, I am horrible and you can't understand me?'
But I didn't.
I sat, the warm sticky grey leather under my thighs
The same as the warm, sticky grey clouds,
The yellow sun just peeking out into blue skies beyond the pale pink dogwoods.

She wakes up, warm sticky breath catching in her chest
As she opens her eyes.
She mumbles quietly about oversleeping
Before she rushes out the door,
Leaving behind a daughter
She thinks she knows,
As she claims to not understand
My label
That I have hidden inside my closet door,
Next to my pink, yellow, blue scarves.
Maybe tomorrow I'll put it on,
Pin my heart to my sleeve,
Wear my colors proudly.
But not today.  
Never today.