I see you staring and pointing. Questioning. Judging. Wondering if the person holding my hand is my boyfriend or my boifriend. She is neither. She is so much more. She is my wife, studsband, best friend, my rock, my soul mate, my world, my protector. But you’ll never see that. To you she is just a woman in men’s clothing. But take my hand and follow me as I give you a guided tour inside of our love. The love that you call a sin a obamination, the love that makes your hateful stomach turn. This is the same love that surrounds my whole existence
and protects me from your fists of hate.
This is the same love that
nourishes my soul so that when you scream “dyke” at my lover I will not get angry or cower away; but instead I will smile and send up a small prayer asking GOD to forgive you for you not what you do.
Take my hand and allow me to draw you a map of how we did not choose this lifestyle anymore than you chose to be ignorant. The first stop will be at my wife’s childhood home where she was outcast and talked about for being too tomboyish by her mother. Let’s go to the closet where she would hide her basketball shorts and tank tops in a backpack that she carried everywhere because her parents refused to let their daughter be comfortable in her own skin, instead they forced her to wear dresses and put her hair in curls or burettes. Let’s sit on the bed where she sat up at night crying and holding herself asking GOD (yes your same GOD that you say does not accept “our kind”) to send her someone some day that would love her for who she truly was and would not judge her based on how she dressed but instead on the love
that she would give them.
Next let’s stop by job where I have to watch men and women have the privilege of showing how committed they are to another through bands of gold and platinum jewelry, vows of eternal commitment, and a party to celebrate their privilege. While I sit quietly and pretend to want the same thing someday because the vows that I said to my wife to be hers until the end of time might as well
have been written in invisible ink because they are non-existent in my state. Taste the tears I cry when my wife gets sick and has to sit in a county zoo and wait until she passes out from the fever that is consuming her body because I cannot add her to my insurance because the day we became one entity is illegal.
Take my hand and allow me to feed you the poisonous negativity that is thrown at my family everyday by you and your society. Open your mouth and swallow the degrading profane comments that fall upon my children’s ears as we play at the park. Comments asking about the specifics of how my children came to be, comments asking can they watch me and my wife express our love for one another to fulfill a sick fantasy. Here open wide and swallow the stress that my wife faces at her job because she
has to work twice as hard as you just because she has three strikes
against her (she’s a female, she’s black and she’s a lesbian although she has a Master’s Degree and runs her own company, you thought it would be cute to make her your assistant. Here choke on the joy that you stole from her when she wanted to help coach our son’s football team bt the other father’s suggested that she help with the cheerleaders instead. Don’t get weary now.
Take my hand and allow me to lay you to rest and cover you with the positivity that we continue to pour back into the same society that has salvaged, battered, and slain some of us just for being us. Lay here and hear the rhythm of my heart as it thumps to the beat of the thousands of footsteps of my fam walking through the street to walk for cancer. Lay here and listen to
me hum the song that the lady at the shelter sang as we handed out food and clothes to those in need this winter. Close your eyes and allow the warmth of our lgbt community donating thousands of our personal kash-money to aid in the research for a cure for AIDS. Allow me to wipe away the regret that flows from your eyes for finally realizing that you could not survive against yourself if you were us.
Lay here and allow a smile to slowly slither its way to your lips when you realize that you are now back on the outside…taking a look inside of my world.
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The author of this poem can be reached on twitter!
http://twitter.com/SiMpLici_t33
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