A Poem

Suicide Note

I used to think that suicide was wrong.
Why would someone just throw their life away?
We have too much to live for, I'd say.
But - Ah! I'd forgotten there are things more
Important than survival and living.
There is love, and loyalty, and choices -
Choices made where there is nothing to choose
Except walls and hard places, like closets.

I knew my mothers would not understand.
There is more to life than mere survival.
There are times when we have to take a stand
To tell the truth, decide the way we face,
Ad accept finally who we will be.

I sat them down and told them I was straight.
The guys at school were just friends, nothing more,
And I snuck looks at girls on the beach, and
I wanted to marry one and have kids.
My mothers looked at each other, silent
In the way that adults communicate.
Having whole conversations in silence.
I felt I had lived my life in silence,
Stepping out to find the whole world was deaf
And no one would ever understand me.

They don't wish to know me, won't accept me,
Say there are support groups I could attend.
I said I love them, they ask why I betrayed them.
They always said they'd love me but I knew
There exists no love without conditions.
I tried to make them see but they were blind
And my mothers looked at me as if I
Was a televangelist preaching sins.

Facing their hurt and angry confusion
("Don't you love us? Why are you hurting us?
Was it something we did wrong? Is that it?")
I couldn't face them like that and fled outside
But there is nowhere to hide from myself.

If there was someone I could have talked to
To explain all the shame and hurt I felt
I would have tried to understand the hurt
I caused my mothers and maybe they, mine.
But who could I have tried with my pain?
Everyone I knew was a friend of ours:
Gay, or hiding (like I) being straight inside.

And so, out of options but with one left
I act, knowing I'll hurt you more this time.
I only hope words can explain it:
The indoctrination "support group" failed.
When you find my body please forgive me..
I felt like you couldn't hear me at all
So maybe now, too late, you will listen.

(This was inspired by an article in the paper that quoted a woman saying how her 14 year old nehpew had come out to his parents, been carted off to a religious conversion camp, and killed himself four months later. Things like that really, really piss me off. So My response was to invert the situation entirely, since the exact opposite could happen just as easily.)