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.

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Stephanie Strick