Profess
February 13, 2010 in Wordsmoker Poetry
Can you even remember
a time when it still seemed strange -
the hard flesh that was not your own,
the unfamiliar rhythms,
the pounding in your head and elsewhere?
Awakening from fever dreams
of strong men who would bend you to their will.
Crying for arms that would hold you
even as you ran to any embrace.
You arched your back and stretched,
assuming awkward positions,
moaning as you had seen and heard
in grainy moving images.
You learned to accept the flesh
and accommodate the rhythms
until it seemed commonplace
because, after all, it was.
Wasn’t it?
But the most important lessons
were taught be those who only took,
those who refused to give,
those who whispered,
“It doesn’t matter how much you love.
Love counts for nothing.”
Dare anyone question
how you came to be this way?
Nature vs. nurture?
What you can remember
is a day in seventh grade
when you beat up the weakest boy in school
merely because
you were the second weakest boy in school
so you could.
He may never have known
how it split you,
how ghastly you found it,
delivering each halfhearted blow.
Or how relieved you were
when he escaped and ran.
As you made your way home
on butterfly legs,
you felt no elation, no pride,
only shame.
But it was not the beginning
of your association with regret;
you’d been introduced years before.
Dare anyone question your right
to walk the way you walk?
To talk the way you talk?
Dare anyone question
the way you were made?
