“Gay people belong in the closet”

He says with a gaudy grin,

I stare down at my socked toes

My jaw clenches

My fist ball in my denim pockets

And my eyes water

I’m petrified, frozen

They didn’t know and they couldn’t,

Then I’m just proving his point,

I thought it best if they didn’t see.

Now sit for a minute and listen,

Every time my mother says “you’ll find the right man”

I feel that my silence is a lie,

When the talk pauses, I feel the pressure to speak,

Then there’s shame

Not for who I am, even though I had that too,

But for who I can’t let myself be.

Everyday I put on the same damn face

The innocent, softness that is straight woman

But that’s not me

Power, mystery, hope, kindness, wit, among other things

But instead I hid myself behind a mask of femininity

Look down into my eyes and tell me   

Did you cry yourself to sleep every other night for six fucking years?

I dated my best friend for three

He thought I was crying for missing him

But in actuality it was for the love I couldn’t give him

All because I thought that maybe just maybe

I could change  

Like if I were with him I could make myself the same

Like if I could love him the stones that people through labeled

Fag, dyke, gay, freak

Which were meant to shatter me

Would bounce off, not land in the debris behind my cracked mask.

But I never found that way

In the end I wasn’t the only broken one

All this pain because I thought I was sick

People told me it’s wrong, disgusting, a sin, unnatural, just a choice

I tried to make your choice

But I can’t

I have found my voice

I don’t belong in the closet

No one belongs in the closet  

I’ve faced too much pain to let this go

I won’t sit behind your wall made from white-washed plaster

Nailed to proud wooden crosses like it’s your messiah,

Like those walls can vanquish the sin you see in me.

I don’t need your moral supremacy,

So, to the man who said gay belongs in the closet

Fuck you