Pride
by Ellen Huang
Content warning: sex, amatonormativity, coming out.
I want to know,
love, I want to know
what it is, the phasing,
interlacing heat,
tying close, organic—
I want to know the experience,
this thing that makes you
so excited, feel real
present in your body,
feel so wicked, so known
feel so loved and overcome—
I mainly want to pass the test.
Know the conversation.
Have one more mundane thing
to do in my ritual routine,
one more okay comfort.
Strangely, I just want the closeness
of the after, the epilogue
where friends relate so casually,
that part of eternity.
I don't think twice of this golden height,
supernova swan song of virginity itself.
I just look over at this optional, essential
commonality, a mystery.
How juvenile, I want you to be proud of me.
I forget that you were.
I forget that when the words passed through my lips,
it held so much power and loveliness
even more than what could be my first kiss.
I forget the way the dress feels as it slips
comfortably onto me, close as my own
skin, heat of my heart caressed by
coolness of the colors.
I forget the way I have let you into the depths
of my winding, mazing mind, and in this way,
I am in you and you are in me.
The way the words held that terrifying vulnerability in the room.
The complementary space that happens when I define I am one thing,
and silently confirm you are not.
The way I nervously returned from the stage,
amidst the event's applause,
back to my seat
and you
tapped my shoulder,
a smile and nod and
meeting of hands
and you
reached over to
speak showers of
affirmation to me
and you
immediately
covered me
how sweetly,
completely
you covered me.
whispering to me the very things I
suppose I will always desire:
empathy, a hint of bravery
oh how it felt as you held me
like you were proud of me.
Walking into a Christian bookstore
by Ellen Huang
Content warning: religious trauma, homophobia, heteronormativity, white supremacy.
I didn't know what I was thinking
With time to spare, I entered on a whim,
a mere peasant with colored pins on her knapsack
treading lightly in the market she knows so well.
It's as if I've come into a bakery, and I can smell the rising yeast
Loaves of bread surely multiplied to feed us all
Engraved warmth of words into panels of wood
Familiar and fresh and ceasing hunger—
at least in my curiosity.
Stay familiar, for this is what we agree on.
Though I always expected to laugh at the iron I cannot touch
I come in curiosity, for nostalgia, or hope
or some sense of reminder of what lasts
Aesthetic brides with slight flyaway hair
Speak of patience and romance and charms to remember
Soft-faced angels with dove wings come
to nest here beside the promise of soaring like eagles.
I think of the princesses, and consider their silver.
But then, a maze of pages and covers
beaming with flowers, only to whisper, upon picking
good god, used to be a lesbian, god is good
I sift through more pages, hoping for the
softness of flour, the nourishment of hope
confusion, god made woman for man, corruption
A book in which they finally understand women
assuming we all want to be wanted the same way.
It gets worse for the men.
and all around me children are blessings / and quotas
women are princesses / and accessories
men are soldiers / and idiots
and all around me, the feminine angels /are faceless
and the aesthetic nails in / his hands are white,
the lightness of it all is washed white.
How do I make sense of it all? That in this market
I will take your bread / and your fish / and your cup / and your charms
But you do not see me?
And as I stumble through, I will sing
of your psalms / and your praises / and your cross
and your kingdom
But you scowl at my colors
and say I do not know love.
I see the blinded angels / Do you see the blinded demons?
How is it that we pray to the same God?
And yet, the familiar bakery makes
wonderful bread that we all break
and dip into the cup.
And yet, the flowers hiss in my hands.
And yet, the bread.
the good place
by Ellen Huang
Content warning: religion, hell.
hell, I’ve been told
is a cold empty destination
with the knowledge that you could have
been loved, the highest of all loves
and knowing you blew it by saying no.
heaven, I’ve been told,
is the singing of love forever, no tears allowed
in this castle on a cloud, no cares left
for art or self or the created earth—
trading all empathy for majesty.
but perhaps there’s more to endings
than gold streets and right crowds
than fire and prison cells—
both merely ways to disappear.
perhaps the maker of the universe
truly paints an expanse where there
echoes music from somewhere beyond.
perhaps I need not
rush headlong to heaven
only to escape all thought of hell.
perhaps love is so much more
than an escape route from the worst.