It was the type of quiet that twitched like fire, the napalm silence
it was the tick, tick, tick before the bomb,
but without the bomb or the tick, well they looked me over
they’re parental lenses five feet thick protection from the glare of
the mutated form that was once their sweet, little, daughter.
They wore their smiles like condoms
I curled myself into the least viral form I could think of,
held back a cough, and asked for a glass of water
Silence here, but in their eyes:
“This ain’t no Jerusalem girl, ain’t no messiah here gonna go feeding no leper.”
Silence.
“You’re 25 years old, where the fuck’s your diamond ring? ”
Silence.
“Ain’t no wonder they all look at you. Wash your hair, take that metal shit out of your face, you dress like you live in the streets for fuck’s sakes, and why the hell you sittin’ like you got a cock between your legs?”
Silence.
“Ain’t no wonder you don’t have a ring. I’m aware not saying just any boy’s gonna do
bringing home no spick, no nigger, no hippie, no Jew, no long-haired faggot flipping his flaming little wrists, I’ll tie him to the fence myself.”
Silence.
“Oh now look at you. Acting like you’re all scarred. Like you’ve been doing some hard time seeing to get your mommy and daddy to call to bawl about some BITCH gone and broke your heart?”
Silence.
“You and your fucking heart. I would have torn it apart myself years ago had I know you would use it to put this family through hell. You got something to say to us? You’re just fucking baggage. Do you have any idea what it’s like for us to walk through Walmart with the whole town knowing our daughter’s a FAGGOT?”
“…you mean dyke.”
“What?”
“You. Mean. DYKE.
And I’ve got, she’s got, we’ve got the 12 inch cock, harness, and ready to prove it. Do you think I’ve got five minutes to waste in the rates of your picket fence right wing pedophile preacher finish-line? I don’t think so. Your ignorance bores me, and I wouldn’t suck a dick, a real one, anymore then I’d take a ring from some prick who thinks my clit sits a foot inside my body, give me a break.”
I’m gonna wait until this end of the sea.
Waterfall’s a woman’s filling over me and her sexy self dancing in the poles of the lines of my outstretched thighs until our two bodies as one beat down all you’ve done or ever will do with your righteous republican sanctity. I don’t believe in your goodness, with your should that’s and should this. I’m so tired of even wasting my breath, my ink on this shit. I just wanna shut my mouth now and maybe roll my words smooth and easy over a perfect picture of beautiful, because there’s
so
much
beautiful.
But I can’t touch you when your ignorance keep dismembering every piece of patients I have left, and I can’t help but wake every morning remembering a front page clipping of a boy from Wyoming who had his face stained red by the hands the of two products who tied him and beat him and left him for dead and when they found his body, through all the blood the only clear skin on his whole face you could see were those lines on his checks that his tears had washed clean.
And that might be crime you would never do but those killers had teachers and preachers and neighbors like you, so don’t fuck with me. I was your sweet little girl when you were sweet to me, so don’t expect me to listen to your version of right, I’ve got ears of my own, I spent years on my own. You say one more thing I don’t like, you say one more THING I don’t like, I’m driving to Walmart myself hanging up a fifty foot billboard that says “Mark and Shirley’s daughter Andrea is a FUCKING DYKE.”
— Walmart by Andrea Gibson
