To The Girl Who Found My Bisexual Poetry Offensive & Triggering

I hope you get heartburn from all the hatred you’ve swallowed.

Hope you never enjoy a funny clip from Ellen

the one where

puppies

pop bubbles

blown by babies

That Orange Is The New Black gives you night terrors

I hope you get night terrors about Nicholas Cage

Where you are Nicholas Cage

And they are not going to make another National Treasure

I hope your treasures have a cold

That flowers smell like violet caskets

That Sunday mornings taste like bruised grapefruits

Memories sink beneath the wrinkles on your face

Your forehead quicksand saturated with furrowed brow

I hope you fart during every date

I hope you be yourself on every date

That you’re as unashamed of your homophobia

At every poetry slam, job interview and hair salon

I hope the world can see you for who are

Who you want to be

That you end up with people just like you

Crack beside a mirror

broken outlined across your face

But as much as I’d love to crumble you like ruptured horizon

Dust you with darkness

Wedge apologies into your throat

I hope no one breaks your face
Dents your smile

Denies you the right to raise your babies

because of who you have them with

Won’t marry you because Jesus says you’re a bad match

I hope when you tell your parents why this week swallowed you

They don’t defend Wednesday's teeth

Call hate speech a second language you just don’t speak

Put a page count on your life story

I pray none of your days are numbered.

That you are never the gay kid tied to the fence

The rainslicked highway

That no one cares more about you in a headline then a classroom.

Your skin should never thicken into polished oak

Doorknob tumors colonize your tongue

It took me nineteen years to hatchet down

The locks I put on my own happiness

To write that poem

To write I am not straight

I am a sunburst ray pirouetting off anything that can love me

That my love is a ballerina rumbling inside my throat

That my heart doesn’t sketch in lines

It is a 3D printer

Sometimes humming about women

She looks at me and says,

But that my not have been your intention.

I reply,

No, I meant it to be very gay.

I hope this poem is triggering.

I wrote it to gun down memories of outlining myself in shadow

To shoot the stranger in a room where everyone knew my name

I wanted each stanza a massacre

Because I was the person who didn’t want to hear these poems.

My family changed temples when our rabbi came out.

I didn’t support gay marriage in high school,

Thought lesbians were fucked up

Because I didn’t want to be fucked up

Because I didn’t want the world to have another reason to make me the freak

I was so offended by gay that I refused to realize I was it.

Girl,

I don’t know if this is a letter to you or who I used to be.

But to you both –

I hope you fight for your beliefs

But will be brave enough to change what you believe.

You can’t appropriate oppression.

You       are not under attack

I             am not triggering your hate

It           was spoonfed gunfire in your high chair,

incubated in a crib of Hiroshima

Being gay is not violent

Shoving bullets through your ignorance

Is not violent

It just feels like trauma to realize the ugly duckling was always a swan

Hollow out your chest so there is room for love

Even if it’s the not kind they said was holy

Because all love is holy

I will love you whole-y

With all of myself

even the offensive

triggering

bisexual

parts you hate.