Can you just let me live?

I pace the suburbs with spray paint, editing

the welcome mats of homophobes until they all

speak the truth: that they personally burned

the roof over the heads of queer youth

are five times more likely to die by suicide

means:

There are many days I thirst for my own silence

but walk through the desert screaming instead

because I, like most of my queer friends, don’t have a child

—I have millions—from Nebraska to Chechnya,

to the Baptist church where I grew up.

My pride in them is a parade I know

won’t keep all of them alive, but I keep cutting

my diary into confetti to throw at their hopes

when they float by scared or furious

or laughing or in love and desperate

for the headline to say: Queer youth

are five times more likely to:

offer to walk their younger siblings home from school.

To notice the different accents of sparrows.

To find an eyelash and spend twenty minutes

trying to pick what to wish for.

Five times more likely to:

never outgrow blanket forts.

To know there is a word for the scent in the air

after it rains. To see lifelines look like telephone wires

and call a friend who’s having a bad day.

Five times more likely to:

adore the last man who walked on the moon

just because he wrote his daughter’s initials there.

To know there is no universe in which they would not

be proud of their own children.

Queer youth are five times more likely to:

see you how you dream of seeing yourself.

To write something in your yearbook that will get you

through the next decade. To spot a stranger crying

and ask if there’s anything they can do to help.

Five times more likely to:

need us to do the same.

NO SUCH THING AS THE INNOCENT BYSTANDER

Silence rides shotgun

wherever hate goes.

TO WHOM IT DEFINITELY CONCERNS,

please accept this letter as formal notification that I am resigning from the position of My Own Worst Enemy. I’ve appreciated the opportunity to lower my standards so far they could win a limbo contest against a crumb. I’ve been honored to serve as the server at the banquet where I eat myself alive. The day I was hired I could never have imagined how many employee-of-the-month plaques I’d acquire from breaking the standing record for standing in my own way.

In this position I’ve grown continuously, like bacteria in a staph infetion. I had no idea that holding myself back would be contagious. I would like to have a different kind of impact on the future company I keep. The scene I made during our last team building exercise woke me to the need for a change. I know the young people in the office are still shaken by my refusal to catch myself in the trust fall. I apologize for that gory display.

Moving forward, I’ll be pursuing opportunities in another field, preferably one where break rooms are for resting and not for breaking promises to the person I hope to become. I fully intend to replace whatever dreams I shattered when I was beating myself up. I have no idea where I learned “punching in” was a literal term. If I had known better, I would have called in sick in the head.