This Poet Just Nailed Why It Hurts to Be a Queer Person Who’s Said to ‘Look Straight’

I am four years old when I ask my best friend Catherine,

“What would it be like if I just laid my tongue on top of your tongue?”

I am nine, and my babysitter comes out to me and my brother

When I ask my mom, “What’s a lebsbian? [sic],” there is silence at the dinner table

I am 13 and there is no one to talk to about gay

I am 16, slumped in the back of class, quietly reading Judy Bloom’s Summer Sisters

and she is singing my baby queer heart’s language

There is nobody to talk to about gay

I am 24 and the summer, and the porch that seduces us to morning

and the lonely walk home when she calls me “straight,” an experiment

I am 31 and the dark congregation of her bed is still a shame I wear on my tongue,

still a sword I polish when I am afraid I am again invisible

I am 31 and my friend Dee says it is my responsibility to come out every time I get on stage

Says it isn’t fair for those of who actually look queer to hold it down for the rest of you

I am 31 and a man shouts, “Dyke!” at me on the street and all I can think is “At least someone noticed”

I am holding the hand of a girl, not yet my girlfriend and not entirely sure how I feel about the word,

but something about the whiskey and the street lights must make this look like love

Curious how only now I am assumed to be exactly what I am

How night is the belly of mirrors, making all the wrong guesses on where our shadows fall

How to give something a name is to also give it a pulse

How the word and her hand fit so neatly in my first

How our grip tightens when it punches through the air like a song

How my mouth wants to lean into her neck and whisper, “Yes.”