"Choosing" to be Scorned
Odd as it seems, I don’t remember where I was.
I just remember my sister wanting to cuss
And wanting to say in my eye there was dust.
I didn’t want
To understand what it all meant,
But I became bent
On research and buzz and scream.
Forty-nine dead
And I got to go to bed
While families of every kind
Sat in their dread and cried.
In all honesty this shouldn’t matter just because
The people were all gay,
But because people are people
And because the shooter was just as gay
As the rest of them.
It is a story of normal jealousy
Turned into murdering
And hand bloody-ing.
And it hurts so bad
To hear people blame the “fags”
For being who they are,
For having the audacity to blame them
For being born,
For not lining up with the norm,
For “choosing” to be scorned,
When all it was
Was a hate crime story about a boy
Who had his heart broken.
It’s not that “the gays” aren’t safe.
It’s that some of them are also crazy.
It was bound to happen eventually.
And we need to know that, just maybe,
Fewer people would care, positive or negatively,
If they were just straight babies,
If they weren’t nineteen and slightly older,
If they weren’t always given the religious cold shoulder.
The crime would have to be even bolder
To get the attention of media showers.
Orlando breaks my heart at every passing mention,
And I have my hand out in extension
For the ones who feel lonesome
And hated
And degraded
And were made to have their well-beings deflated.
But my heart breaks not only for the ones with
Sexualities like mine,
That are trans, gay or bi,
But for the people who have died
Far before the right time.
I continue crying
Not because it “could’ve been me,”
But because there was killing
And I wish I could’ve stopped it
Had I not been hundreds of miles away.
Do not simplify the lost to the
Identities they were wearing.
Remember they are human beings
With families
And now too empty housing
Now that someone’s disappeared.
Never forget what happened,
But remember the lost for more
Than their identities.
That’s what ruins me.
I hate that people died,
And I hate, almost as much,
That the people won’t remember
These people were parents, mommies
And daddies,
Employees
Someone else’s “sweetie,”
That they had beating hearts,
Were so smart,
Had the courage to start
Living their lives in a place
Where they weren’t always safe.
Odd as it seems, I don’t remember where I was.
I just remember my sister wanting to cuss
And wanting to say in my eye there was dust.
While everyone slept
And my mouth felt like cotton,
I couldn’t speak
Because people were lost
And their personhoods’, forgotten.