My voice is constantly put through a filter,

My thoughts and feelings watered down,

Until all you can hear is static.

The only time the filter comes off is when I’m writing.

When my scars turn raw again,

Scabs pulled off to bleed all over the page.

 

My great grandmother used to see angels in her backyard

And rose bushes growing in her house.

Medications have helped keep her age-frayed mind together,

Have kept her from seeing angels and indoor roses,

Things that don’t exist.

And I…I have stopped looking for angels.

I never used to like going to church,

I was a child that had anxieties I couldn’t tell mommy and daddy with the Sunday school given knowledge that all of us sin.

That sinners burn.

Whenever I went to church my skin would itch,

I didn’t want to breathe,

Afraid everyone could see all the bad things I had done,

Afraid someone had written “SINNER” across my forehead in all caps.

After graduating from eighth grade I refused to go in a church.

When I was younger, I didn’t know what “gay” was,

I felt wrong for wanting my Barbie to marry another Barbie.

Even as I am older,

Silently appreciating the female façade,

Admiring things that I know are purely artificial and only appearance deep,

I still feel inherently wrong and overall abnormal

Because I have always felt alone.

Asking God at the age of nine what was wrong with me,

Getting silence.

When I was younger I used to hate singing the “Our Father” and “Ave Maria” because I thought that God found the monotone litany as boring as I did,

Now I refuse to sing them because I don’t even think there’s a God to listen.

I stopped being afraid of upside down crosses,

I see more evil in Crusades and Inquisitions,

Beneath a pointed white hood,

In the glint of a razor blade,

Than I ever had in demons,

Because I believe Hell is inside all of us.

It causes us to drown each other with fire hoses,

To shackle each other in ships,

To shoot each other from the safety of a car,

To kidnap ten year old girls to be prostitutes,

To see Jews get thrown into ovens and turned to ash

And do nothing.

To see people killed for oil

And do nothing,

To see innocent men thrown in prison

And do nothing,

To see drag queens harassed on the street

And do nothing.

Go ahead,

Continue looking for angels.

But angels don’t help.

 

I wish I could tell you all these things.

I wish you could hear the passion in my voice,

But,

I’m afraid,

You’ll only get to read them on a page.

Because after I put my pen down,

Click “save” on the computer,

The filter will go back on,

And my walls will resurrect around me,

Blocking

You

Out.