Queerness

I  

A friend of mine told me about  
a friend of hers  
who’d come to question her sexuality  
while married to a man.  
 
He pressured her into things  
like group sex,  
lapping at the faucet of  
her sexual confusion,  
little more than a dog  
who doesn’t understand  
where the water comes from  
and doesn’t care to.  
 
There was a happy ending.  
She fell in love with a woman  
and they spent their retirements together,  
long into an age when infirmity  
ruled out sex. Because that, said my friend,  
was her friend’s epiphany,  
that what she’d wanted all along  
was someone she could wake up with.  
 
II  
 
The flowers of a soul  
are sometimes choked with weeds,  
sometimes starved of light and water  
and sometimes drowned in them.  
 
Many types exist, and so the garden  
can’t be named for this or that flower.  
A queerness comes out  
in the riot of red, yellow, purple, white,  
black, azalea, and more.