Learning to Love While Queer

How many times were you told that
it would destroy you? Tear you up
like a tissue in a toilet bowl.
It could never be loving, beautiful,
or even enjoyed. To be sought
like a drug in a bar’s backroom,
another draught from a whiskey bottle
kept locked in an office drawer.
A vice. Something to wreck your liver with.
I ask that you seek love before you die.
To kiss, to give, to take, to cry,
in ecstasy both animal
and divine. And see that what
your parents taught was just an obstacle.