Time is a fickle thing.
There was once a time where 2 men in love
Were mere glass figurines
Invisible to the eyes of our ever so benevolent nation
If they were lucky.
This was the way that things were.
Other times, if they were unlucky,
They were the target.
To the bows slung over the proud shoulders of the normal denizens
Arrows dipped in venom of hate and apathy
Wielded with unflinching disgust
This was the just the way things had to be.
This was the way that the glass had shattered.

The night amendment 1 passed in North Carolina, it effectively barred all same sex unions in the state. Supporters of the proposed constitutional amendment gathered in the embassy suites hotel in celebration of their triumph over same sex marriage.

They indulged in a wedding cake.

I scan this room in my mind’s eye
Amongst the many beautiful women
Openly chewing on the broken shards of dreams and stolen opportunities
Deep red streams,
Flow from their bloody gums,
Dripping onto their fragile, white bridesmaid dresses
I see that one, young boy
Sitting at a table
Alone
Shoulders slumped,
Crestfallen.
As if someone had flung a sack over his shoulder that he had mistook for a body bag
An empty, untouched plate before him as he eyed his father
Driving the knife into the belly and through the beating heart of this cake
So sweetly unaware that he is killing so much more than just his son’s appetite.
But how was the father to know – silence was all he ever heard from the boy.
Because silence is the only language that the boy had ever learned to speak
Because that’s just the way that things were supposed to be.
When was it that the man who held the boy as an infant acquired a taste for sin?
And where would he go to find the confection that would satisfy such a craving?
He had walked up to the gates of hell with a cross dangling dauntingly from a braided string
Draped proudly around his neck
Knocked on the devil’s door and asked to borrow a cup of sugar
But how many cups of sugar would it take to mask the taste of your own sin?
Did you mill the flower under the grinding teeth of tight lipped politicians?
And fuse the batter with the tears of battered young boys
And when you mix it all together, did you bake this cake
From the fire in the furnace fueled by my homo sin?
Should it burn too hot,
Leave it in the cool, unsuspecting comfort of the closet
Drape it in the luke-warm shelter of ethereal white frosting
Engulfed under the textured blanket of shame
Stick a pitchfork in it to make sure it’s remains solid, to make sure it can’t melt away
To make sure it lies frozen,

Forever in solidarity within the depths of the closet.
Leave it there, for this is just the way that things were meant to stay.

But when you eat it,
When you gnash and null on the love of my brothers and sisters,
When you choke on the sweet, sticky fondant, which feels like a noose around your neck,
A frosted barbed wire around your harsh tongue,
Will you feel weighed down by the rubble of the city made of your brothers in love?
Foolish enough to think, that your jaws were strong enough to crack the diamond of our engagement rings?

Strong enough to cut the intangible strings connecting our hearts.
Did you have the audacity to pray over the first piece that you bit into?
To thank the altruistic, omniscient lord for this great leap of conservative progress?
A leap almost as far as a young boy’s from the George Washington bridge
Yet just as quick.

A leap with a splash that caused waves which never seemed to stop

Waving?

Bye-bye?

So, there, sat the young boy.
Lost in his daydreams of a forgotten tomorrow
Lifelessly spectating as his father took his second helping
Speaking the only language he knew how
The language of silence.

The boy reluctantly bit into the cold slice of cake
And swallowed the homogenized shards
Of the 2 invisible, glass figurines,

Cutting him from the inside

Yet he remained silent.
Because that’s just the way that things were meant to be.