Let me be perfectly queer

See me standing before you. see, beneath the glitter and the sequins and the fishnets is just me. Me: miles of skin, blemished and imperfect just like you. Just like anyone. Yet, why is it that the bumps and lumps of my skin don’t detract you, but the glitter does. You said you grew me yourself, so why am I hidden away in the garden shed? I learned my life should be spent concealing, tucking feelings inside me to appease you, when nothing would please me more than to wear my truth like armor. Let me encase myself in who I am and write my heart on my sleeves a substitute for metal because it’s the strongest part of me. I learned my life was better spent living a lie, than living in love. I slunk and slid away from the opportunity to be loved by many to just be loved by one, but I’m forever caught in a perpetual reverie that hiding my heart will make you finally accept me, when we know if you loved me at all the glitter of my personality would be your favourite part of me. Because it’s my favourite part of me. I love the way that I love. So why can’t you love me? Is it due to sin? Then, don’t hate the sinner, don’t hate the sin, accept it and know that in doing so, it doesn’t incriminate you. I am better knowing who I am. You grew me, so be as proud as I am that I have blossomed into a kind of beautiful I never thought I could achieve. And every rose has its thorn, but what you think are my thorns, the thing that you insist on cutting away, are my petals that so many people love me for. Would a rose by any other label not smell as sweet? Yes, I have good in me, but you aren’t wrong to think I have thorns, my thorns are the part of me that let you make me think I shouldn’t be who I am. My thorns are the pieces of my mind that believed you when you said who I loved was wrong. I have seen the April showers, now let me know the sun. Let me bask in the light where I will bloom as eternally me. So, see me standing before you all that I am: petals and thorns. And let me out of the shed, let me reside in your garden, let me grow the way I was intended. and let me live in the sun.