When I Spoke

When I spoke the words I am gay

I had let them fester like blood on a prison cell wall.

I hadn’t known that they would free themselves.

They scaled the swollen gutter of my throat, and shot

themselves right through Uncle Andy’s

diaphragm, holding the air in lungs hostage so he

had no words left of his own. He could only unfurl his

vinegar lips to sputter silent thank yous across my brow.

I kissed the darkness three times, because it stole

those three merciless words from me

before my Mother could.

She told me that I would never

survive a New York winter:

Mother, painted face and gossamer cheeks. It wasn’t you

walking down the hall to Economics, when you heard

a familiar voice, a voice that told jokes you always

laughed at in class, and he said: I can

tolerate faggots,

but if they flirt with me, I wouldn’t

hesitate

to beat them down.

I swore that was the best joke I’d ever heard, because

my stomach laughed itself into hollow

tree trunk,

and then nothingness.

Mother,

painted face and gossamer cheeks,

you wouldn’t know that I

hated him more than he

hated me.

Let me tell you what makes me measure

my existence by the pauses, when the silence

between each stammering heartbeat screams

like a head snapping forward.

The taste of gangrene is much

too sweet, so it’s better to slide my fingers across

my swollen gutter throat,

aching for that ticking pulse to just

stand

still,

when each throb of the heart will dance

to the cadence of euthanasia.

But the rabid pounding

against my ribcage,

fists upon flesh, bare-chested,

is the wielding of hammer and chisel.

He is a blacksmith,

And it is he who wrought my personhood.

I can’t tell you who I am.

But I can tell you that as I sat in that

lavender bedroom, when

my Mother spit that quivering prayer,

fix my boy,

I knew then, the worst combinations of words

always came in threes. But I,

made of only jagged elbows,

clicking jawbone

and slivers of teenage torso,

I pieced each slab of soiled

skin back together, and

I hissed at her,

I am consummate and I am beauty

and you cannot fix what is

not broken.

And I can tell you that once, a woman

christened me Angel

and told me what my Mother couldn’t,

that the venom in my veins

was only stardust.

She had all of her Angels turn their eyes up

to that slice of heaven and we screamed

yes yes yes

until we became phoenixes, rising from the ashes

of our yesterdays.

And I can tell you that my little brother

has the voice of weathered sidewalks, rich

with the cracks of prepuberty and smooth

like innocence unsullied. And his

I believe in you could sing

every spilled breath to sleep.

I can tell you that my Mother

could very well be right when she told me I

would never survive

a New York winter,

because I am only jagged elbows,

clicking jawbone,

and slivers of teenage torso.

But there is one thing

I know for certain:

that boy,

who let those three merciless words

scale his swollen gutter of a throat,

is a blacksmith,

and he

has taught

everything.

Fix My Boy, 2014 by Ana Hinojosa

Copyright Credit: NOTE: This poem is part of “Pethetic Little Thing,” curated by Tavi Gevinson. Read the rest of the portfolio in Poetry’s July/August 2015 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2015)