I’m beginning to think that,
this summer,
I could maybe admit to my dad
that I’ve struggled to deal with
homosexuality since I was 9,
and I could ask to go to counseling.
This way he will not believe I just
decided to ruin our lives by being gay,
or making any sort of decision with him.
Hopefully it’ll help him see me as I am –
his daughter,
seeking him out for guidance,
because that is what he wants
me to do with any big decision.
Never to “come out” and announce
“I am gay whether you like it or not”,
but to admit,
“I tell you this because I need your help.
Please help me.”

A mother wanders into the back room
and flips through sheet music
still spread across the keyboard.

Her shoulders sag as she recounts
a life so briefly part of hers,
until one day

not.

Not that noise when you fling
your hands upon the keys,
stomping at pedals,
straining your voice, such dissonance
that would make a spirit cringe—

but your mother’s songs, crooning love
into your dreams where you rested
before you could even say her name,

your father’s drawl
as he clasped his hand
together over yours,

hymns drifting over
our heads as we walked,
hand in hand, behind the chapel—

We used to crowd around the piano,
flipping through hymnals, calling out titles.
There, in the dark, we would sing,
straining our voices, raising them still.

Each night they asked,
with folded hands,
Would she be kind, and Godly?
Would she love him as herself?

Often they added,
Give him wisdom,
give him ways to love
which he could not have known
he had.

But they no longer pray
these prayers.

Outside the chapel, he heard a ringing,
like a bell, over and over, that only swelled
in volume until even the birds fled the trees.

But he couldn’t follow them; the music nagged
at the back of his mind like an old memory
until he climbed up the stairs and peaked

through doors that stretched into the heavens.
They swung shut behind him and he tiptoed
on the floorboards, shaking underneath the

harmonies as they swallowed the room,
and in the center he saw—barely more
than a child, commanding it all, shifting

her feet on pedals and fingers on a keyboard,
squinting at sheet music, pausing to wipe off
her glasses, cringing at the slightest wrong note.

Briefly, a mother wonders—
in between folding Ralph Lauren polos
and yelling at the dog over her shoulder—

about that bottle-blonde with the pug nose,
a tall, skinny stereotype offset
by the barest hint of a stammer,

barely nineteen, but planning to play
the piano on the stage for some man,
some husband probably, to sing.

She laughed at almost everything,
and a Bible always rested in her purse—
quaint, perhaps, but good, at least.

All along, she seemed to know
the temporality of her stay,
smiling but scared.

A mother wanders into the back room
and flips through sheet music
still spread across the keyboard.

Her shoulders sag as she recounts
a life so briefly part of hers,
until one day

not.

I fell in love on the steps
of the chapel; or at least,

that’s how we told the story
in the months to come,

because everyone wanted
an answer, an explanation,

as if it was the most wonderful
secret in the world and they all 

wished to know some part of it,
maybe so they could sit on the

steps themselves in an effort
to have that secret for themselves,

but the bottom of my heart nags at
whispering in the darkest place, “Liar,”

because I did not fall in love
on the steps of the chapel,

or anywhere at all,

and neither did he,
and maybe we thought

that the two lies would
cancel each other out,

 no harm done—

if only, if only.

I am one of few who know
the name of your soul, and
sometimes that tempts me

to scream it into a crowd
until I can’t make another
sound, to toss it out

for the wind to carry away,
for strangers’ hungry ears to
devour as they please

I would tell them the
thousand names for a
thousand memories

that could make them
point and laugh,
or gasp in horror;

would whisper a map
of the bruises in your
hands, your heart;

would reveal every thought
and the spaces between them—

If only, if only
I hadn’t told mine.

At the sight of your breath
you shiver,
at the sight of your humanity

this cold is more than we can bear.