Featured Image: Jernej Graj
Dear Straight Self
I wish you had known many things
Though I know you needed to stumble
Blindly groping about in the darkness
Before you could rip that blindfold off your eyes
And finally sprint into daybreak.
I now know you were deluded
So deluded by the illusion
Of your heterosexuality
You pushed me down
Deeper into those cold depths of yourself
Holding my head though I thrashed loudly
Drowning and desperate for oxygen
All because you feared me
Though I am yourself
And you were me.
Dear Straight Self,
I’m sorry I didn’t fight harder
To claw my way to the surface
But you buried me under comfortable lies
Even while I loved ‘the wrong people’
And secretly doodled rainbows in pencil
On the margins of old notebooks
Hoping one day to color them
Onto this dark mahogany skin
With pride.
Dear Straight Self
I sometimes mourn you
As mistaken and miserable
That you were,
I miss your surety
The way you looked to the future
And knew the person you would be.
As if that future self were some marble sculpture
In this museum of my life.
But dear Straight Self,
I’m sorry for the pain I caused
Though we both knew the day would come
When I would pull that sword from the rock
And come for this soul
That became our battleground,
Our Holy Camelot.
And as strong as you were
Our enemies made you queen
Not the thoughts and dreams in this head
I shall call our subjects
No they crowned you with a wreath of poisonous thorns
While you slowly died.
So I took the throne,
Unsure of everything
But my queerness
So dear Straight Self,
I’ve made it to the surface.
