My lungs are full of dirt and clay, suffocating me as I decay. Poppies and roses decorate my skin, marking where I’ve been. Why is it a sin for a boy to love another boy so fiercely his heart weeps? Why is it a sin for two boys to be so happily in love? Why is it a sin for me to love him?
“It is not a sin,” my father says. “As long as you say you’re a girl, it is not a sin.”
“It is not a sin,” my mother says. “As long as you sit a foot apart and never touch, it is not a sin.”
I scream and rail against this, I snarl and fight against that. I want to be happy, I want to feel, I want to live.
But I am being suffocated. I am being buried. My lungs are filling with dirt and clay. I feel my body start to decay. My parents’ words echo around me, wrap around me, I want to scream. I sit up from the dirt, claw the clay out of my skin, I pull the poppies and roses out by the roots and I scream. I scream until everyone knows the injustice, the pain in my skin, the things that they have said, the things I have ever thought about myself because I have hated myself for so long. I have hated myself for so long, I forgot what it is to love yourself. I’ve forgotten what it is to be comfortable in my own skin I’ve wanted to rip it off for so long. I’ve forgotten what it is to be the perfect daughter because I’ve been trying to be a perfect son, but no one notices my efforts. I try to be the best son possible. I’ve tried to be as vicious, as violent, as all the other boys. It didn’t work. It never worked. I tried to be the perfect son, to live up to my father’s expectations, but he’s only ever seen me as his perfect little girl. I am no one’s little girl. I am no one’s girlfriend. I am no one’s daughter. I am a son, a boyfriend, a teenage boy. They will know this.
I claw the dirt and clay from my lungs, I scream out my pain. I pull the poppies and roses from my skin, roots dripping… dripping… dripping…
Writing From A Teenage Oddball 