I burned the first love poem I ever wrote
Watched as my heart’s blood ignited the fumes of fear
A fear that still seeps beneath my door, crackling like paper and drizzling like ink
Urging me awake with the words I could never, would never, should never say
“I love...”
No.

When I was fourteen I chained my heart to the floor and told it to wait
Shackled the truth until it shivered with a shame that shines like the sun in your eyes when you're trying to see the clouds
(But I knew, and the truth knew me, too)
At night, when the universe was asleep, I would tread feather-footed down the steps into
My delicate dungeon where I sealed my secret
until, one day, it went against my orders and began to whisper,
"Open me, open me, open me"
And my mother overheard and my heart could no longer wait,
So I told her.
I told her that "I love..."
No.

She said that she had sacrificed too much to have raised una maldita pata.
Which translates roughly into, "I cannot accept you."
And her words were not vibrating sound waves but an ocean that exploded into chasms of grimacing disgust and denial like ice drops
Hers was a poem I could not burn.
And I know she may never understand, but
"Mami,
It's something I can't help."

The first time I kissed a boy, I cried,
Because my heart was saying "No" and the stars were laughing as they tapped on the passenger window and beckoned me to open up the door, come on out
And say that "I love..."
Not yet.

My father always says that he takes me as I am, that I am his "greatest creation"
But the other day he admitted that he'd make me "normal",
if he had a magic wand.

I want to give him credit for the idea.
Because if I had a magic wand,
I would vanish to the moon and toss my misplaced guilt into the galaxy,
Pull the sun out of my eyes and watch the planets with their drifting clouds
(Not just white, but almost rainbow),
Write love poems in timeless space where I will have no oxygen to burn them
Grab the stars by their fiery cores and tell them, "It is time",
And the meteor showers of perfect freedom will fall

But, on the moon, there is no one to love.

So I come as I am on on the blue-green speck in which I have hid for far too long
Where I am, at last, coming out,
And where I will one day say,
With words that are not vibrating sound waves but an ocean of sublime truth,
"I love her".