To whom it may concern,
I’m told invisibility is the superpower that everyone would choose
And I think that’s funny because they could just, like,
Indicate an attraction to more than one sex and
Abrcadabra
And maybe they’re right, it is a power
I will never know how many dates would flee
If they knew
How many
Beatings
I’ve been saved because it does not say “man love” on my sleeve
I only know how strange it is to be this
Big, loud, corn-fed farmboy cum hipster and
Sometimes be so hard to see
To the people who ask “why did you come out? I’d never have known”,
You answered your own question.
To Michael Hutchence,
Your videos are where I first realized. I was a teenager. I am, indeed, one of your kind. Rest in peace.
To Grandpa Simmonds,
I wish I came out before you died. You’d have gotten over it, just like the hair, which is to say mostly, slowly, grudgingly.
To Grandma Zeigler,
I wish I came out before you died. You’d have been so proud.
To the American Red Cross,
Take my money
As you will not take the blood from these veins
Too tainted by too much love
I never knew how to draw your lines
Would that I could do the same good somewhere else
But
I will pay thy poverty, o
Thou bigot Apothecary
To the people who ask if my wife knows,
Yes.
To my wife,
I love you.
To Grandpa Zeigler,
Thank you for the support. Get over the hair.
To Grandma Simmonds,
We’re cool, I just didn’t want to leave you out. I love you.
To those who say the word should be “pan” or “omni”, not “bi”,
I don’t care for your words, but I agree with you that attraction is not a coin flip. When I say “bisexual”, I am using it as a shorthand for:
Humanity isn’t one binary, it is a spectrum, it is spectra, it is a grand sky stretching out in all directions and all dimensions
and for some people attraction is the sun, bright and focused
and they know that to see their light they can look in one direction
for me attraction is the night sky, and everywhere there are pinpricks of light
Maybe they collect in patterns, and
over here is the constellation riot grrl
over here the constellation glitter boy
and here in the middle are librarian, musician, scientist, all
straddling what some would pretend is a dividing line
but if it’s there I don’t even see it
I don’t begrudge anyone their basking in the sun
knowing where their light will be
but I would never trade it for my night sky
where my light comes to me from all directions all at once
unpredictably and beautifully
I also think maybe more of you should admit that even on the brightest sunny day
occasionally
you can see the moon.
I am real