inkskinned:

oh, being queer in a world that wants us to be straight. we are innocent until we pull out our guilty words, lay out the poker hand proving we’ve hid that fifth ace up our sleeve. but first, in here, in this space we occupy, uncomfortable, sweating out the wrong skin, weighing the word girlfriend on our tongues: we hear what they say about us.

i am told often homophobia “isn’t that bad anymore”, can we stop it with the singing and the slam poetry and the constant making things about us. how not everything needs to be gay or it wasn’t because you’re gay or we get it you’re gay. they say it like that. they say it with this tone, with this particular heft to it.

do they forget how they talked when they thought “this girl is one of us”? do they forget how they called the boy in pink shorts slurs. how they giggled behind their hands about boys in makeup but still made some “this is great!” comment for likes while promising us they’d never have a son that grew up in glitter. did you forget what you said when you talked about them being bi, how you spat and hissed and tutted about pronouns and how we should just give up and how people are so full of themselves now they won’t even take one of two options, they need a third to feel full.

remember once i told you about my friend. how she might be a lesbian. how she isn’t sure but she’s pretty sure and how the word scares her because it’s dirty. you waved it away and said she’d get over it, it’s just a phase, she needed the right man and she’d be happy.

no, there’s no homophobia though. it’s just that “my friend” was me. it’s just that we hear what you say and swallow our tongues and you tell us the bruise heals before the pain is even done.