Untitled - Nina

Homeless hungry
Sick and tired
gay ...aids
anything helps

I'm sorry
I don't have any change
I can smell your forgotten yesterday and broken past and
it hurts to look at the way you must have dreamed on nights like this
Cold and the rain's drizzle can pierce through bone
I'm sorry

I have to turn away for fear of seeing myself in another's eyes
Someone like you
I am not saying I understand but
Lately I've been searching for a place to call home
because my mother won't look me in the eye these days
and my father blames himself for teaching me to throw

No, I have never been homeless
just gay
and like you, I jump afraid of what the shadows can bring,
even when she and I are alone in my own apartment
where the light is clean and the windows fogged

she said if she were a boy it wouldn't be like this
I woldn't be so scared and
I would kiss her under the moonlight or
under the frost bitten sunrise something in early December or late into spring
but it doesn't matter
it doesn't matter that we are on the upper west side of manhattan or the lower east side of new york or
even in northhampton mass

because someone said this was abnormal
becaues some guy name Freud named me deviant
said that we should walk faster at night
said that its wrong to trace the way her eyes
wrinkle like rivers on a map when she cries
said its wrong to love somebody liek her somebody like me

so I have to learned to love with calloused hands
learned to just to survive only want what is given to me
the chance to look at her behind closed doors and
lay with her after they have been locked and bolted
and sometimes that's enough sometimes surviving is simply enough
because there are better things to do and people have died for this
people have died from this
and I thank them for my chance at existence

because I don't have to wear my armor all the time
just in conversation, carry a closet in my pocket just to speak to people
"ya know I don't agree with homosexuality but if that's your lifestyle"
its not a lifestyle its a life

homosexuality is not a disease but 50 percent of the LGBT youth have attempted suicide and they have
taken gay out of the psychological disorder manual
because apparently it's a hostile environment that drives people to suicide
and it's a hostile environment that drives kids out of homes
so 45 percent of lgbt homeless have been kicked out

but you are not a statistic and I am not a crime and
this is no political statement
holding a hand isn't a referendum and I
never felt like a proposition and I don't justify a relationship
with a vote so please stop staring this ballot
when I kiss her I'm not expecting a revolution
I just don't want to hate myself for it
Don't want to hide behind ambiguous pronouns and uncomfortable sentence
I don't wnat to be anybody's secret

I know this kind of love story was never supposed to exit
It was tucked away from books
So I stopped reading fairy tales and started to read between the lines
Because there is no alice only this rabbit holed kind of life and slipping through the cracks
Because Brittany Spears can walk into a cab with no underwear and get three pages in the paper
But no one will ever know you name or that
There are twenty thousand more like you
Just searching for a bed

So I'm sorry
There's no change
I can smell your forgotten yesterday and broken past and it hurts to look at the way you must have
dreamed like this
I'm not saying I know what you are going through
I'm just saying that
I get lost sometimes too