a journey
girl only knows tradition—mother and father, boyfriend and girlfriend, harry and sally. girls meets boy, attempts to fall in puppy love through flip phone, text messages reading, nm u? girl likes his smile, the way it stretches when she teaches him how to spell chihuahua, how to do long division, how to study the fifty states' capitals, sayings like trenton got a new jersey. girl likes his eyes, the way they dip over her, right past her, to whichever girlʼs breasts are developing. girl flops into bed and cries.
girl yearns to be his for six years. girl accepts his cruelty as a gift, an act of love, sees soulmates when myers-briggs inventories match, sees boy sucking on emily arnelloʼs lips and not hers, retreats to choir room to spend the rest of life alone. girl, devastated.
the rest of life is three years. girl reads about girls who date girls, girls who kiss girls, beautiful girls who hold hands beneath tables with other beautiful girls. girl questions, doesnʼt ask her mother, doesnʼt tell her father about the way the woman she passed on grand avenue had eyes that captivated her because they swooshed and twinkled like van goghʼs starry night. girl keeps quiet about the sparks that ignite in her bones when she sees her.
girl meets girl, feels something.
girl panics.
girl faces self in mirror, black craters under her eyes, repeats: i am not, i am not, i am not. girl bites bar of soap, grits teeth, lets sour settle on her tongue, mixes something sanitary with her saliva for once, tries to come clean, fails. girl is what her mother defined her as: flotsam that will never amount to anything except death of the albatross, lodged in the throats of the ones who donʼt like the taste of her.
girl cannot sleep, girl lies awake with the moon and wonders what she deserves, what she wants, what she can get.
girl dates girl and no one knows. girl keeps secrets inside her screen, locked away with a four-digit passcode, 1743, numbers that feel familiar but are faint and foreign. girl glues phone to heart, holding on for dear life but is not strong enough, avoids capital punishment but must meet her makers face-to-face and admit her mistakes.
counselor mediates in february, mother and father deny until may. girl holds hand in public in july, is talk of the town for the entirety of her senior year.
girl is confused. girl is a lesbian. girl loses her best friend. girl wins scholarship, is asked if she received it just because sheʼs gay. girl encounters angry father. girl graduates beside the boy whose father posted fliers of her kissing her girlfriend in every business in town, saying girl is worthless and will never be as great as the valedictorian, she will forever live with the number two stamped on her transcript, along with the word dyke tattooed across her forehead.
girl arrives to college, meets roommate, never says a word when she listens to her say it over and over: faggot, faggot, what a fucking faggot. girl is desperate, girl shouts into void. void is full of love and helps her move out.
girl joins her first pride alliance, girl meets girls with similar interests: kissing other women, or kissing men, or whoever the hell girl wants. girl is hugged, girl is given safe space, girl cries out of happiness for the first time, girl eats rainbow cake during the homecoming football game with a rainbow streamer tied around her forehead.
girl is accepted.