It is sadly an oft-valid stereotype of gay culture to have complicated relationships with parents. Queer people walk such a fine line between honoring our dignity and honoring the desire to maintain our family-of-origin attachments. And, because world-views can be pretty perceptually blinding, family members may not even be aware of the devastating emotional torture that can ensue for their loved one as relationships are actively being reformed. This poem is for the children of families so full of love and so full of faith that a love of god overwhelms love of the child. May you feel seen, may you feel validated, May our pain be honored.
"Until the lion learns how to write, every story will glorify the hunter." - proverb
(un)Conditional
You ask me to love you
openly and without conditions
yet there are so many barbs and edges
that put up hedges and line the pathway
between your heart and mine
and its a long walk to dinnertime
because you expect the sinner to climb
down to your lofty heights.
You say to lay down my defenses
as you erect fences and time becomes recursive because history requires
I investigate the fires lit through the fields of our crossed paths and mixed desires
your will against my own swallowed by
need after need to find peace between us
and these things tear at my heart
like saw-toothed strings
while the question rings over and over
and the question tells me it is not safe
because I know that laying down the drawbridge is not something spoken of, it’s shown.
I didn’t choose to be defensive
I’d never wish to be unkind
I would never want to hurt you
but I need peace of mind
I wish that you could love me
how I’d like to love you back
without exception
feeling every day gratitude
that I am yours and you are mine
trusting that I’m not just an object for you to be proud of or possess alone
feeling that you really know me
with no fear of your love’s egress
as I’d invite you into my closet
to know me more because in love
there’s nothing to atone
when it’s love with no conditions
and traditions don’t come first when it comes
to your first and only son.
I wish I didn’t need to believe you loved me
because experience extinguishes
the need for faith alone
and doubt would be relinquished
to the fleeting spectors of nighttime visions
snarling of paternal divisions only
to be seen as clownish in morning’s light.
It’s alright.
I’ve come to terms with the path trod
and the knowledge that you don’t get to decide which dreams come true
and which ones vanish in the night.
If only I was not anathema to your god
and he had grace enough for
all the creation made and the creation
you say he let spot and tarnish.
I wish yours was not a god who said that shedding blood made it permissible to speak out of
both sides of your mouth;
it is inadmissible, my opinion, I know
and sowing discord was never a price
I wanted to afford but the chords
struck ring true in the spaces between
what is said and what is done
as it is there that our
petty bitter battles arelost and won.
You say I’m lost but the cost of the love
unconditional yielded fruits so superficial
that they rotted in the blaze of my earnestness and need to be no more
and no less than exactly what I am:
a vessel queerly made
imperfect
but still good.
I thought I understood what love really was and it frightened me
because an unconditional love with
so many strings attached
while saying that this is unmatched
and feeling so incomplete after
prompted me to know that I was
always meant to represent
your personal disasters.
I wish that loving me to you
didn’t equal serving two masters
especially since what we were promised
was freedom to be exactly who we are
a mosaic of majestic differences
forged in the fires of our inconvenient truths.
In the bankruptcy of our pain
could we set aside our egos and search for instances where consensus is
and release the needto be so right and so sure?I cannot endure to live in a love
where I am asked to give
and be thankful for shame in return.
I’ve burned in the fires, faced my desires,
I know how I’m wired and find it inspired
at last, I love myself
in the way your god promised
in the way you said you did
and I’m too wise now
to experience your coldness as warmth.
Like a dog
beaten one too many times
just for being a dog
I crave and cower at the arched
eyebrow of your love.
I’d like to take the high road
but it’s hard to reach you from these heights;
above it all I find myself dreaming
that you could love me seemingly the way
that you ask me to love you.
Openly,
without condition or expectation, as I am willing
-and I am willing -
but it is killing me to bleed out
standing on the glass of our past
while I wait for you to brush
the crumbs off your table.
I am able to feed myself but
I’d rather you joined me at the feast;
I hope you can find peace.
-rrf