Down the street
are people
I’ll never meet
who will never
understand who
I am or what I
think about anything
and who don’t
care to learn about me
or how I might be
a great person or
someone they
would love to know–
they don’t want to know
This street
Now quiet
All the fires having been
Put out
People dispersed
The smell of ash and dirty water
Now all over my toes
I feel lost and
Without a county
And I wonder
Will tolerance ever prevail
In my lifetime
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Returning home, the small town seems even smaller,
where she is further misunderstood,
having never really been deemed necessary
She’d outgrown their staid mindsets,
where tradition and conformity reign
So, she continues on, like a drifter,
as her former home melts into the sunset,
of a cracked rearview mirror.
I look at you with disgust
Because of what you have
You look at me with disdain
Because of what I lack
In this battle for supremacy
A paradoxical war of attrition
Bystanders see us as equal
Our actions garner mutual attention
We cannot be distinguished
Such reflections of each other
Might as well be joined at the hip
In this sack race of entitlement
We stumble over one another
Both looking like fools
And yet
We swear we are different
I guess it does take one to know one
I can feel their eyes piercing through my skin, their judgments
stripping me of my dignity. My soul is pure, yet they say I’m the Devil’s child because of who I am.
Struggling each day to keep myself locked inside, putting on a different persona everyone can like, pretending to be someone I’m not, someone society wants me to be. Afraid of rejection, I hide like prey does from its killer.
Craving acceptance. Stifling my conscience.
Its time for a change.
I am who I am
and the only thing you can do is accept me as the human being I am.
Because, at the end of the day I’m just like you, our blood has one color.
I am not less than others but as equal as all. For equality is freedom and the world is my oyster.
I am who I am
And shall live each day as myself.
I am who I am.
They didn’t hear the footsteps, not
at first. The street dark, hushed, just
the steady tapping of raindrops against
the asphalt. Hand in hand, they ambled
toward home, one immigrant, both gay,
celebrating a year of firsts, a life of forevers.
So much to plan before they married. Visas,
lawyers, whom to tell and when. How to piece
together joy in a broken world. But this was
New York, the haven of rainbows. Nothing
really mattered. Until they heard the footsteps,
sauntering at first, echoing their own, then
hastening. Their hands tightened, knuckles
whitened, knees buckling, footsteps neared
in lockstep with theirs, his tread splatting in the
now pounding rain. Their joy detoured toward
mortal fear. Their house in view, they bolted
like young colts for safety, locked themselves
Indoors, and exhaled. Footsteps stopped at
the door. The knob turned slowly. Click. Click.
The deadbolt had been their defense and as
footsteps faded into the night, they knew there.
was nothing left to say, nothing to do. Calling for help
would mean deportation, the severance of souls,
the end of a journey that had just begun. Time to sleep.
Another chance tomorrow to forge ahead as usual, go to
work, run errands, make phone calls, discuss wedding
plans … and steel themselves for footsteps along the way.