warped girlhood
by Erin McKay
CW: internalized homophobia
This is a poem about the way we passed the summer:
languid in your room with the window open,
me breathing in the air like it was our final july.
i taught you Bonnie Raitt on the guitar and
never told you what the song was called;
i figured you’d learn it soon enough.
This is a poem about that one party, the one where we came in together,
but i spent the night watching you from across the kitchen.
when i never saw you look back, i cried to the only other gay person i knew
and as comfort he told me, you feel unlovable
This is a poem about holding that unworthiness right in the hollow of your throat
because what’s a lesbian but a girl with more space inside her,
filling it and filling it with backs turned and eyes averted;
So, we’ll sit on your bed and i’ll teach you guitar;
and there’ll be nothing else but the breeze through the curtains,
giving me goosebumps all down my arms.
Erin is a sixteen-year-old from Connecticut. She enjoys making playlists, keeping notebooks, and long skirts.