The first time you clapped eyes upon a bride,
All arrayed in a splendour of red and gold,
You knew, without words somehow, or as though
From words you’d heard once, then forgotten
That one day, it was you who would take her place.
Neither did you have the words for the way
Your gut churned at that glimpse of your future, or
At what you knew, deep down, to be true —
That the bride’s rose-red wedding attire only paled
Next to the bright red blush of your own desire.

Every girl you knew loved every girl she knew —
But when you, you reached out for them, with
The desire that always felt too big for its bounds,
It felt like the most dangerous thing in the world.
When you let yourself linger a beat too long
In her arms, the earth itself could have split open
Under the burden of your longing.
When your hand moved, as though of its own accord
To tuck a stray hair behind the ear of a girl you loved
You bridged an entire chasm just to close the distance.
No language you possessed could make sense
Of this twisted, forbidden thing in your heart —
This thing that dug in even deeper with its thorns
Until you could look no closer, for fear of being pricked.
You were mute, and they took your silence for disinterest;
But the truth is that you were choking on the weight
Of all the things you did not know how to ask for.

Imagine how it feels
To always be grasping blindly for
Words that you didn’t know how to name, or speak.
Imagine how it feels
To always be watching, but never be part
Of everyone growing up, and turning away from
You, while you remain trapped in Neverland.
Imagine how it feels
To be buried alive, as they shovel dirt into
Your eyes, your nose, your mouth, your shallow grave
Even as you struggle to fill your lungs with air.

Lesbian.

It is not a word you expected in this poem,
Or in any poem at all. But why shouldn’t it be,
When this word has felt like a benediction
Since it first fell into my outstretched hands?
What better to finally make sense of what I always have been —
From when I was eleven and I discovered for the first time
How a girl could be as the sun. I couldn’t look her in the eye,
But just to sit next to her was to soak in golden warmth, to
Dispel even the gloomiest of clouds on the horizon.
From when I was fourteen, and I wanted so badly to be
Knight in shining armour to my best friend.
From when I was sixteen, and I found others like me who didn’t know
To name what they were, but with whom I shared poetry
And traded glances ripe with meaning.

If I could, I would reach backwards in time
To that lost child who still lives in me,
And give them all the words that I could,
All the words that I am rich in now.
Lesbian. Queer. Trans. Non-binary.
I would give them an entire dictionary,
So that they would have the words to imagine a future
More than anything others could have dreamed up for them.
So that they would have had the words to understand
How they wanted less to be the bride, than to be with her.

The title is taken from the poem fragment that is most commonly attributed to Ancient Greek poet Sappho, although its true authorship is undetermined.

Cover image by poet