LGBTQUIET+

"Pass the potatoes."

I pass the potatoes to Aunt Shelly, the one who never really liked me.

When I was twelve years old, I did something really bad, and she told me I did it for attention, though really I did it because there was nothing left to do. After that, I didn't stay over at my cousins' anymore.

And now that I'm seventeen and things are different (though not by much), I'm still able to look her in the eye and pass her the potatoes.

I watch her ladle them onto her plate. They smell heavenly, richly bathed in thick gravy, peppered with sprigs of fresh rosemary. Aunt Rebbeca's husband is a marvelous cook.

My mouth waters. But I'm not hungry.

Every year we sit around and we eat, and I'm the only one who feels bad and dirty. Everyone else is used to me, and that's what makes me feel the worst. The fact that they have come to expect this of me and it's normal to them.

I remember kissing Abby. Her mouth was soft and she held my face in her hands and her hair tickled when she leaned in. And even though it wasn't me she wanted to kiss, I was okay with being second because it was better than being my usual self, which was nothing.

And when I hung up my colors in my room my dad told me it was against his ethics and that I had to take it down. So I folded the flag up and put it in my closet. There was something ironic about it, and deeply infuriating.

To shove that part of me way back in, so that we could all eat dinner in silence and be thankful that I kept quiet about my thoughts and my heart and my anger and my feelings and the disrespect that scorched my skin.

And it wasn't a secret that I had no secrets anymore. And sometimes I still wish I kept quiet about it.