Hushed singing surrounds me
Rhythmic waves of sunsets and campfires in the form of notes
A small blue blanket is wrapped around my tiny, fragile body
Watching as the whiskey scented breath, escapes my father
While he rocks me, singing,
“Hush little baby, don’t say a word
Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird
And if that mockingbird won’t sing,
Papa’s gonna buy you a diamond ring”
A deep smile rests on his gentle face
Proud of the child in his arms
I close my eyes, as I drift to sleep
Secure, and protected in the warm colors of honey and citrus fruit

When I wake
14 years later
My father sings a different song,
His breath sober, and clean after years of addiction
but his words are sharp, and jagged
Red fires, and black holes now make up the notes
He sings to me while I defend,
“It’s criminal,
There ought to be a law,
Criminal”
He twists the lyrics to fit his meaning
He fights to fit what he’s feeling
My identity left him screaming at me to leave
I close my eyes,
Afraid, and broken in a pit of flames and dark ideas

When I wake,
My voice is hoarse, and gray
My father started drinking again after 10 years of sobriety
All because of my identity
I sing softly to myself,
“Hush little baby, don’t say a word
Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird
And if that mockingbird won’t sing
Papa’s gonna buy you a diamond ring”
I wrap a blanket of cold air and tears around my body
Swirls of broken mirrors and empty bottles surround my head
As the memories of when my father used to drink come to mind
The reality hits
the past has become the present
And I close my eyes once again

Mother,

No metaphor can describe what I'm feeling.

No bird longing for freedom nor the flower growing in a rotting land will suffice.


You don't need to show your shame in sharp words,

your dismissal cuts deep enough.


I told you who I am and you erased it like it was written on a white board,

black dust sticking to your fingers.


My voice, echoing on deaf ears.

The walls, stronger than me.

Better listeners then you.


I imagine tearing off my flags from the closet door.

Ripping then to shreds then sobbing over their loss.


I hang them there to remind myself to be strong.

How weak is it then, that one word from you left me staring at them in silence.

A dull pain replacing the thumping of my heart.


How weak is it then, that this poem, which will never reach you,
left me crying hot, dripping tears,

the first rain of the season.


You told me you accept me, a contract with white words written between the lines.

You told me you don't mind, I didn't take you for a liar.

You hugged me and I believed everything was fine.

I still do, in the silence between rain drops.


Did you know that a scoff can leave purple green bruises?

Healing slowly and alone.


You must know that words leave scars,

even if they are being said absently with the wave of your hand.

Perhaps especially so.


I told you who I am and your first reaction was to tell me I'll grow out of if,
as if I had discovered myself yesterday.

I explained and your second reaction was to treat it like an ideology,
as if it was ever a choice for me in the first place,
something to be learned.


You refused to listen further, I doubt that you've ever started to.


You didn't understand my fascination with wings taking flight before I told you.

You still hadn't connected the dots, the shackles of ignorance at my feet.


We are the flower.
Your behavior- the rotting land.

The growth- feet firmly on the ground, wings curled around my body, twitching to be let out.


I wonder, deep at night, if I will ever find the right metaphor.

I know that I won't.

There was solace in the quiet,
before you opened your mouth

And proved me wrong.

Like a hawk in a hunt, a fresh guard,
I held into my walls.

Surely they will accept me.
Surly they won't.
Black and white together, mixing into gray in a never ending spiral.

Long after you knew and hugged me a warm reassurance,
I told you, yet again, I have never been attracted to a man and probably never will

And you shot the bird out of the sky with your words of,
Never say never.

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.

My vains, they're coursing with ink from all the words I did not say, from all the details about me I did not care to share.

Because what could I say to make you understand the pain of hiding me away?



The boulder of emotion that drops down and ignites the empty hole where my heart should be every time you speak of a future that I would rather not have at all than go along with your plans.



The flinch I suppress whenever you speak of a husband or kids that I would be forced to bear in your oh so pink future,

Pink that is so bright in your eyes but dark and dripping in mine.


The decision I make as my hands dig into my chest in an attempt to reach up into my heart and relieve the pain of being ashamed of what I am- of who I am.

It's becoming too much!


The waiting
for the perfect moment to let the ink pour from my tongue all over your too clean floor.


The fear of your reaction knowing your liberal approach is only for what you've been taught is right to love and wrong to hate, knowing that you do not want to learn and believe in anything you deem as new.



The step back I take as I ask myself;
"Is it really worth it?"

Telling myself that I don't owe you ****.

You have sowed the seeds of self hate with your casual heteronormativity in my mind and now you have no right to its flowers whose colorful petals I have struggled to maintain.

But even back here, it's getting hard to ignore the spark of the possibility of freedom that turned into a fire ready to consume my mind and body.


The hope that you will accept me for simply being me. That you will put down the raging flames of worry in my heart.


The smoke is far too close to my lunges to keep me hidden any longer.

Each breath comes shorter as time goes by, the heavy numbness of a fainting spell on my doorstep.


The answer.

YOUR answer, the part that will either burn me with the scorching shock of your disbelief or will carry me to peace by the black river of your reassurance.


My story,

the one you hear right now,

that will never be finished for the smoke has choked me as the ink came raining down my eyes, down my throat, in a vain attempt to keep the fire at bay.

Time plays games
with me and
          she’s been winning
On an off-kilter axis,
Atlas, the world is spinning
a little too fast

It’s been months
already since I
          shed my masks

still somehow I’m surprised
it doesn’t show
how bright
I am
newborn it’s-a-baby-girl pink
where
                                                       (ar­e you excited?)
smooth skin meets the
grindstone
peeling away scales grown
denying myself

You promised, Momma,
you’d never be embarrassed
how could you be
I mean
I am new-born-baby-girl pink
light and airy          
                
                          not so sure
                          its a sure thing
                          you’ll see

But

the truth is that I
don’t have to
open my mouth
               to be

                            and somehow

that makes it all



              a little



                               slower

I wear many faces.
Skull-grin stiff and smiling,
they present a kaleidoscope,
a re-fractured, glass-shattered
symbolic representation.
Here’s to piecing it all together,
to the hope that one day
the snake-skin masks
will all shed.

“Because when you come out to me there’ll be one of three reactions.
I’ll either laugh, I’ll cry, or I’ll give you a big hug.
Or maybe a fourth - I’ll look you in the eye and ask who’s surprised.”
And I said
“Nice to know.
I’ll bare that in mind for two years down the line when I finally have the courage to tell you”

- coming out to my Godmother

(12/09/19)

Where I sit, in a closet full of greys, which aren’t greys,
But colours of the rainbow, gleaming with a diffused glow,
I am not colour blind, but she was, the day I entered her closet,
But now she isn’t, for I have seen her feel the colours,
And sometimes you need not see them, to feel them,
You just have to wear them and see the world outside
through that gleaming diffused glow,
with a butterfly or two in your gut;
you’ll realize that the world is a closet too, that needs to be opened by the might of the strayed,
because the world is colour blind,
just like how she was when I entered her closet.
So, while I sit in here, I wonder what my role is, for I have built a castle in one corner,
just above the drawer where she hides her deepest secrets;
Maybe I am here to show her the light, so that the greys can become the colours they deserve to be
and then her closet can become the most colourful of them all,
and I can watch her be herself, not just in our closet,
but also to the world outside,
For I fell in love with that woman, who is not afraid to be herself, for she can carry any colour with poise, elegance and freedom.
That’s what the world should see and learn, from the most beautiful woman, that I share my closet with.