Sweeping spiderwebs off the porch
There is a version of myself that would never
But she does not sit on a balcony overlooking the bay
Reading a book to the setting August sun
I’ll be in my hometown next weekend
And it has me thinking about the girl I was then
She thought she would get married at the church in the village park
And invite her whole class, those sixty people she barely talked to
Now I spend the evening sobbing over queer joy on TV
And reading queer love stories in my graphic novels
When I was fifteen I bought a gay book by accident
And quietly shelved it after chapter one
(I picked it up eight years later
it was good
if I let myself read it back then . . .
who knows . . .
maybe the story always unfolds how it’s meant to)
My summer slips away
Half of it consumed by sickness
–The coughing kind or the crying kind–
But those are just a few spilled paint drops
In a beautiful room of my own
With Love,
Natalie