A piece for an LGBT support zine, because everyone deserves to be loved. copyright potatoturtle. enjoy!!
I.
mama says jesus is watching,
eyes on flower-patterned tabletop,
on empty cookie jars and sticky hands,
entwined -
("get away from each other." mama yowls,
but jesus stays quiet.)
teacher says shouldn't we be playing?
the others are draped over the plastic playground,
giggling at girls,
wait, girls?
(cooties sounded a lot like cookies,
cookies that weren't as good as ours anyway.)
II.
papa says the compound's too small anyway,
and kids better help other kids,
which is to say
his son better start growing up.
(he never really minded the hands,
as long as we didn't touch his paper.)
emily says he looks nice,
buttoned up and starched straight
in the shirt from last christmas,
the one i picked.
(he kisses her hand, just for laughs -
but i see the way he smiles.)
III.
uncle says he can't see the point.
back from the war of screaming
clouds and comfort women,
he has forgotten how to love.
(we are young and we believe in the present, but uncle is an influential man.)
papa says leave,
his paper crushed, .22 cartridge
shot, streaking through the halls from a
smoking mouth.
(our hands hesitate now, but they still hold - i hang on.)
IV.
mama - she's lost her words,
found us tangled and eyes
wide, mouths like sticky cookies,
this time stolen from the skies.
(she is shaking; jesus watches from under his crown of thorns.)
grandfather says,
and he's reckoned with the book,
that it's just some syndrome,
the sin of the mind.
(i move three floors away, but
my bedroom door stays open.)
V.
principal says i should consider it,
diploma done for and all,
and i do, in the haze of entwined fingers
too dainty to be mine.
("it's not like that," he texts, and
i do not reply.)
it's my mouth, i think -
saying i understand, but i am not
for the way his eyes are haunted
by a bullet in the brain.
(he says sorry:
i know he has learned to lie to himself.)
VI.
emily says he proposed
in a parking lot, over a chocolate sundae
and fries. he smiles, cracked at the edge,
doesn't say much.
(he has forgotten the taste of us,
and it is for the better.)
his mouth, my mouth
flowers faded on a tabletop:
he has a woman and i have my words
and the world smiles -
(he is complete, and i am
a soul-searcher: nothing ever meant to be.)
