You had to leave. Not because you wanted to, but because they wanted you to. Because they wanted to be safe and happy and that couldn’t happen if you were vaguely gay. You knew they were wrong but the truth would take too long to explain and the pain would only get worse if you tried.
So you packed up the person they wanted you to be and moved out of their house, carrying the baggage around like a blanket that kept you cold at night while you traveled from door to door, sleeping on sofas and floors, wrapped in clothes that weren’t yours anymore but at least they fit.
Maybe if you wore them long enough, playing a part that could please them would be possible. Maybe the Sharpie ink scars they tattooed on your skin and your soul would sink in and make you acceptable, at least to them if not yourself. Maybe you could live with that. For a while.
Flannel shirts don’t discriminate. They hang and wrap around you, multicoloured like the flags you want to wear like a cape and fly and be free in. Soft sleeves mop up the tears and blood you shed as you try to cut and carve your way to the person you want to be.
Your friends complain you don’t dress up for Halloween but you don’t know how to explain that you’re wearing a costume every damn day. You’ve painted a smile on your face but looking at your eyes in the mirror reminds you how fake it is.
You roll up your sleeves and you look like the person you’ve always pretended to be and hate yourself. You heard people say your name and hate yourself. You get called sir by the waiter and hate yourself. You lie in the hospital bed, think about everything you’ve been and had bto be and hate yourself.
So you wrap yourself in your flannel. You feel the soft press against your skin, watch the coloured lines contour and curve around your arms and want to be like that. Curved and carved into that coke-bottle glass frame. You want your chest to be heavy from love and happiness instead of negativity.
So you shave off the physical and metaphorical beards that kept you safe, secure and in sadness. You grow your hair out and raise your voice in volume and pitch. It’s taken four years, but you’ve finally left those boxes of boy clothes by the side of the road and in thrift stores for the people who need them.
You keep the flannel shirts. Not to remind you of who you were, but to wear them as multicoloured flags, proud and open on your new chest, with all the queer t-shirts you need emblazoned with the logos of who you really are. They wrap around your wrists and arms like warm hugs from an old friend that doesn’t care about the old you, just the new.
© Emilie C. Black, 2020
Mxcellany - Poetry, Music, Art 