Tonight's Poet Corner: A Long Overdue Letter

A Long Overdue Letter

by Belinda Roddie

Dear twenty year old me: 

I must inform you that your lack of self love

is alarming, and oh so pruned, groomed,

and primped in your scribbled dramas.

I think I burst a blood vessel reading

the third act of that one play in which

you acted like your sexuality was

God's eleventh fucking plague.

Tell me, was it all the wafers you

consumed in front of Christ's altars,

and they stayed glued to your tongue

and weighed you down, chiding you

for your so-called sin? Or was it

the media you devoured, too, the kind

that paints all lesbian lovers' life

in the pall of a greedy Grim Reaper?

I have to wonder if that night, when

you nearly prayed in public, sitting

on the curb near your OC apartment

bawling your eyes, you started

actually learning that who you were

attracted to wasn't something to be forgiven,

but something that made you more lustrious?

Would you say to your future wife (and

she is one hell of a looker, I can tell you

that) that you're happy to have married her,

but you just hate the burden, the onus,

of being so obnoxiously gay so very much?

And if so, how do you think the poor

blonde bombshell would actually react?

I feel bad for you, twenty year old me,

because you have not yet learned the fact

that your expression of love is beautiful,

like starlight caught on Van Gogh's canvas,

like madness bottled in crystal and glittering.

Would you believe me if I told you

that after a decade, you would not want to

be, or love, anyone else but this?

The Bible you're still hugging against your chest

insists that you "love thy neighbor as thyself."

If that neighbor becomes one with you

in your bed, will that love still be equal?

Yes. It will. I can promise you that. For I am

the covenant incarnate, the rainbow arch

that your Lord provided, swearing to a ragged

Noah that his connection with humanity would

never falter or fluctuate again. Believe that,

my poor young past soul. You deserve a break

from the cocktail of self-loathing. Drink

something stronger, but also more nourishing.

I have a glass filled to the brim for you.

It is the blood of our new and everlasting

Covenant. Be free to scream at the end of

the Day of Silence, to dance to Lady Gaga's

"Born This Way" with your university's QSA,

to write songs showing adoration on the girl

of your affection, picking yellow roses

and throwing thorns at false doctrine.

And be free to kiss the one you will marry

with all the strength and fortitude of the flood.

Trust me: You'll thank me for it later.

I would know. I live a life of fresh self love.

Yours, in ever queer affection,

Me.