I want to be kissed the same way I once craved adventure;
A little girl, dreaming of climbing mountains, of quests just like the ones in her books.

The same girl dreams now of the gentleness of soft hands cradeling my face, of stars in my eyes and giggles in the night.

I want to be kissed the same way I once craved adventure;
In theory.

I want not the cuts and bruises from the stones, the unbearable sun beating down at me as I climb higher and higher.

I want not the relationship, strange lips meeting mine.
I don't want to see a face all too close, to know its details or hear its name.

I don't want to be kissed.
I want the fantasy of romance, the love of the story, the soft gestures of imagination.

If I am but a character of my own creation,
then I don't want the story to come true.

I have two things hidden in my closet:
Your birthday gift and my pride flags.

I ran to my room and tore them down from the walls the moment our company has arrived,
Preserving our doll house image.
The natural heterosexuallity I've learned to imitate.

So,
I suppose in a sense,
I have two gifts for you hidden in my closet.

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.

Through the skimming of a worn out book I found a garden.

Full of welcoming people, full of love.

All like me, all so different,

Recognition and understanding is what they thought of.


Among the blooming flowers, where they talked.

Under the buzzing of the trees, where they joked.

Bonding over what connected them,

their uniqueness among the stars.


I rose to find the garden, reading of our history.

Holding the answers in my hands like lilac skies and green earth.


As I read, the rotten leaves crunched under my feet.

Looking up, no person greeted me,

none were there to be found.


Smoke covered the trees, the silence overwhelming.

There was nothing to breath in, but blood and destruction.


Oh, I soon wished for the silence to wrap itself around me again.

Silence is better than spitting hot hate, when the quiet before the storm is all you can hope for.


They held the torches, standing in front of the still burning flowers.

A meaningless crusade for the innocents, a terror fueled by ignorance.


I am not ashamed for running.

I'm not ashamed until night falls,
until I think of all the souls that followed my path and decided to speak up,

a lost cause weighing them down so they could no longer stand upright.


Through the skimming of my book I found a garden.

Once beautiful and peaceful, now torn to shreds.

Full of welcoming people who had not burned alive,

who had not died.

I didn't see the walls set ablaze.

I didn't watch the doors lock.

I didn't hear the first scream.

I didn't smell the smoke.


I came to the town to find my people.

To bond and joke over what made us
special, unique
The same


I came to the town because I heard that within the kingdom, that's where I'll find the land they, too, had to claim.


Burn scars greeted me,
Silence at the doors.

Bloodied stones littered the streets,
Decaying flowers in their pots.


A gray plank nailed
on a barren door.

A last testimony
from the people who called it home.


Dear wanderer,

We have ran for the hills, we have scattered across the land.

One day we will return,
Demand our freedom and acceptance.

But for now, dear traveler, if you are one of us,
know there are people in the world, know that you're not alone.


I wiped my tears.
I walked away.

At the edge of town I turned around,

From the scorched ground, underneath the healing ancient tree,

a purple flower bloomed on fresh grass.


A promise for a second chance.

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.