Your First Joy

I am sorry.

I’m sorry that your first joy is not the son that you prayed to God for since you were a little girl.

The first joy that you hopefully gazed into heaven to one day be blessed with.

A son, who would take his hands and bathe you in the ocean of euphoria.

A son, who would drown the dirt of misery stifling you.

You this seed reaching to become this magnificent flower.

 

I am sorry.

I'm sorry that your first joy doesn’t walk like a man.

That your first joy doesn’t talk like a man, doesn’t dress like a man, doesn’t act like a man.

I’m sorry that your first joy is not the man you knelt to God for every night.

That you beating him for acting gay did not beat the gay out of him.

Him, who snuck into your closet and drowned his face in your makeup.

Twirling in circles with his arms outstretched, with his freedom outstretched.

Unleashing himself from the cage that you locked him in.

 

I am sorry

I’m sorry that the pills your first joy injected into his body did not kill the gay.

Whose only birthday wish to the burning candles on his cake was to be normal.

Of him screaming at Lucifer to leave him so that he can be holy.

I'm sorry that when you immersed your first joy in holy water to cast away the demons, the demons did not leave.

When you took your first joy to the sea to be baptized from this wickedness, the antidote was useless.

When his eyes flooded with tears because he could no longer bear this evil, the evil in him did not flood away with the tears.

As he fell to his knees every night and begged God with every fiber of his being to be straight.

God never answered those prayers.

 

I am sorry.

I’m sorry that your first joy cannot see himself placing a ring on the finger of a woman.

But he has painted a majestic painting of him uniting his soul with another man.

Because to give your first joy peace, he’d like to think of you being there at his wedding.

Walking him down the aisle to a man who you saw worthy to sit beside him on his royal throne.

You, proudly sitting in the front row with a smile so big the sun is envious.

Your eyes infused with tears, because your first joy is at last receiving his euphoria.

But when he steps back from this idealistic world, his painting fades to gray because you witnessing your first joy lying his lips upon the lips of another man is the biggest disgrace ever before your eyes.

I’m sorry that your first joy is cursing you with these shackles.

Shackles slapping you with tears because your only joy will never tell you that his wife is pregnant with more joys.

 

I am sorry.

I’m sorry that your first joy is an embarrassment because he's holding another man's hand in public.

I'm sorry that you will never again kiss your first joy because the thought of him being intimate with a man makes you want to be intimate with death.

I’m sorry that your first joy is a disease.

That the son who you thought would water you, uplifting you from your dirt of suffering is snake venom poisoning you.

I'm sorry that you now desire to be locked into a den of lions.

Lions clawing your eyes out so that you don't have to see your faggot of son.

I am sorry that I am your first and last joy.

 

Mom. Mommy.

I have sacrificed everything in me to be the first joy you’ve always dreamed of.

But this is who I am.

And I no longer am ashamed.

Because I am beautiful.

This poem is about: 
Me
My family
My community
Our world
Poetry Terms Demonstrated: 

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