The First Academic Queer Oriented Poem I Ever Wrote

 If home is where the heart is then we're all just fu—

At 14-years-old,

I stood on top of the strangest man-made building I'd ever seen.

It was the city’s staple,

flocks of tourists gravitated to it,

and strung up on the highest point of it 

in contrast to the grey sky,

was the brightest rainbow flag.

I thought,

“they would never do this back home.”

A day later the skies had cleared and I was sat on a patch of grass not far from where I stood before.

I watched curiously as people strolled past on the path in front of me,

some carrying the same flag 605 feet above me,

some carrying flags I had only ever seen reflected back to me on a computer screen,

most carrying a sense of carefreeness I had never felt.

My brother, his wife, and their daughter sat behind me,

I didn't notice that another family had sat near us.

With them, they had a child the same age as my niece.

I turned around to see that my niece had ran over to the other child as her ball rolled in that direction,

the child picked up her ball.

I rotated my body around to observe the 2-year-old conflict more,

“give the ball back” one parent of the child warned in a singy-songy voice.

The child handed the ball back and ran back to his parents.

His parents.

His parents were two women—

my sister-in-law exchanged the glance with them that parents who are strangers exchange when their kids interact out of nowhere,

and that was it,

and I had never felt more safe in my life.

I wondered if I would ever feel that safe back home.

A year later my brother and sister-in-law brought me to the same place around the same time,

the flag was once again strung up upon the building which I found less strange and more of a beacon of light.

Once again I sat in a field,

in the place of the family that sat near us a year ago

was a group of bare naked people

and another group smoking pot.

I still felt safer than I ever had back home.

-2016