An Abstraction of Queer Shame

She did it for me,
Without rhyme or reason,
Unlocked my love for women in the pit of my stomach.
Let it spread with a sunset of purple mirth through my loins
Let it flush my heart and flutter my eyes.
For when I kissed you, it turned from this kind of wavy conniption to something smooth and red that pools behind your eyes, a cascading performance of pigment and water.
Palpable in the way it sent a burst of recognition through my senses of sweaty palms and a barking heart.
Of the curly, cropped, blonde, straight, black hair I’ve had the privilege of tucking behind ears of lovers.
Our eyes both darting in continuum, astonished by each other's presence.
You let me share myself with you, a mess of fingerpaint spread with clumsy marksmanship and shaky hands.
Kissing girls gave me a momentary glimpse inward,
Similar to that of when you lean too close to a mirror, examining your iris, and in a blip,
You swear you see a reeling field darting inside you, reassuring you that you’ve found yourself And when your eyes of brown, green, and blue met mine while I lay facing you in adolescent flush
Overcome by an equilibrium of a sort of embarrassment and gratefulness for this mutual agreement of,
A celebration of curiosity, practice, and chance.
You have shaped my life.
I love you, I love you.
I love you.
Yet this honeymoon of queer blithe could not hold grip in my heart.
A slur of influence began eating away at the lovey dovey jelly that had make home on my brain. And this new intruder commanded I grow,
To change,
And rearrange.
Offering a new temptation of popularity and pleasure.
To grow in a into a crippled sort of shame,
A milky black hurt that beat beat BEAT down my love for the soft supple skin of the feminine.
It wanted me to grow in the way a tree grows around a chain link fence,
Unreluctant and inevitable.
The syndrome unbearable, plagued me with the longing for attention.
Eyes that play games of caste and thirst.
Despite my body turned dry and congealed like that of a salted slug,
Smearing between fingers, yet alluding the absent grasp, surrounded by a lust that is not mine.

Oh my love, what species are these?
Oh mother, why must I please them?
What fowl hair is this, what judgement wrapped in sharp teeth and oiled fur?
How many more of these beatings ‘til I submit to their liking?
Hours of primping, priming, designing, smiling and of me, still demanded, is more?
How much of a knotted mess of red yarn has gathered in my stomach, one that used to hang on the hook of my heart but has grown weak, consumed by this black mass as well.
Unsolvable from the years of shame.
Shame, Shame,
SHAME
Now consumed by shame!
Before this disease I dawned technicolor garb in celebration of my love for the feminine.
A rupture of cherry red and ruby glitter from every orphus.
Healthy. Careful. Secure.
Two years has passed since that I’ve felt that kind of health.
Since then it has withered, leached of life by the mass of shame that has made colony in my frame.
No moisture gives motion to the gather of plastic flecks that have pooled in my fingertips and in the soles of my feet
Missing the ruby red of yesteryear, grown dull and dusty from the sickness of shame.
So long it’s been since I’ve felt blood in my veins
Or color in my cheeks.
But worst of all,
No one asked me to do this to myself.
I swallowed this tapeworm,
Unbeknownst of the length and weight
I choked down the beast until is stretched my skin and gauged my ribs.
To be attractive in the eyes of a sexless form,
A manifestation of the progressive dissatisfaction
Disappointment became addictive.
The growing, reacting, concentrating, changing to
Oh pretty please, love me love me!
Love me!
No longer was  I  capable of using  my voice  to say I love you. Or give love.
When finally, my transformation complete, I kneeled before the hungry eyes for final judgement Prepared with an intentionally applied a face of artificial pink pigments, hidden by a mop of coarse mane, a display of ribbed side and pale skin.
Of chapped lip and unplucked brow, but I swear I’ve tried my best!
So many ways to shrink, hide, and please.
Crumpled I kneel in solitude before the master to my slave
I hold these ingrown lives upon a fine china platter
Yet the eyes look onward, not bearing a glance in my direction.
Gray spongey eyes dare not even look at me.

For even before this illness, this hunger, my fate was decided. And so was yours. Not good enough. A path cut into the tightly packed soil.
At this I am defeated, disowned, worthless.
Shame Shame
SHAME
An overwhelming rage inverts itself upon me.
A crisp compact of hate that sliced through the monotony of thick gray goop that occupied my being.
Oh i PROMISE I’VE TRIED.
Tearing and smearing at my tar coated lashes, biting my arms, and thumbing my eye sockets, Desperately trying to access my inside,
fumbling foolishly with the mess of entrails, I scooped up the expired glitter Desperately rubbing away the dirt in hope of revival.
GRAY SPONGEY EYES dart around the room, but still did not see me.
A hot rush of hurt overwhelms me
How could I not be enough?
In crying snotty mess the glitter does not show sign of life.
Malnourished gray trash spills out of me.
Crouched in pain I look break my stare from the eyes.
And look behind me, to find a sisterhood of devotion to these eyes.
Women who had been there much longer, and work so much harder to get a glance, their platters topped high with augmentations, tattooed brow, and fretted lace thongs.
In trance, in days. It’s probably been decades.
But the eyes do not fall on them either.
And I realize I must surrender.
So now I ask of you.
Not to tell me what I have become, for I could not bear it.
But to tell me that I am gay,
Because that feels so much simpler,
Than what it actually is.

Original cover art.