I knew this girl once,
who avoided dating up until twenty one.
Friends thought she was picky,
over sensitive,
or just wanting to focus on school.
But she never told them
about how her first thought in kindergarten,
her earliest memory,
was when she was thinking about how pretty
another girl was.
She was young
and had not yet let society’s thinking patterns
imbed themselves into her brain,
but once they had
she let them live there and
pretend to be her own.
She saw all the hate
and judgement
given to those who put actions
to things she could only think about
and decided that she didn’t want to be like them.
She didn’t want to be the next
“dyke”
or
“fag”
that her friends harassed.
But she didn’t want to date a guy
like any of her friends,
either.
So she opted for solitude,
for denying the pursuers
and showing up to homecoming alone
and avoiding prom all together
and listening to her friends
as they chant an endless stream of condolences
and “we’ll find you the right guy someday”
but they didn’t realize that ‘someday’
was never going to happen.
“High School is the best four years
of the rest of your life”
they told her.
But they never explained
how she would have to walk into
an endless torture of hearing the wrong things
and saying cruel things to other girls
when all she wanted to do was give them a hug
and say “I understand.”
But she couldn’t really understand, could she?
She chose the easy way out at first,
keeping it a secret,
staying “in the closet”
to avoid the humiliation that she forced
so many others
to go through.
So she decided that she’d had enough.

I knew this girl once,
who avoided dating until twenty one
because on her twenty first birthday
she showed up to her parents’ house
with a girl on her arm
and grinned as she finally admitted,
“Mom, dad, I like girls.”

I knew this girl once,
who avoided dating until twenty one
but overdosed on her twenty first birthday
because her parents were so hateful
to who she truly was.
Her parents paid for
but never showed to
her funeral.
Her friends, who she sticked with
since high school,
left the service early.
Her girlfriend,
whom she
went to school with
in kindergarten,
and bullied in high school,
stayed the longest to make sure
that her dozen-timed whispered
“I forgive you”
was heard.