f a g g o t.

i should not be ashamed, but still flames of embarrassment lick against my cheeks, the thick smoke that issues from the bright red plumes clog my nose with the syrup of pain. dewdrops bud on rainforest canopy eyelashes, or maybe it's ice that streams from nostrils in chill air, visible cold that freezes to eyelashes and melts, streaming down hills of cheeks in iridescent ribbons. my throat is punctured by tacks with serrated ends, braille that reads morbid tales of bedsheet diseases and spins spiderwebbed lies thick with blasphemy and forged by hate. i am red letter, the hot topic, the watercooler conversation starter.

i lick my lips, cracked granite that is like lead to move. and my screams are like molasses stuck fast in my throat that warbles and bobs and pleas for use. i am a silent movie colored in black and white.the heat of flesh that i long for, soft against the pearl sheen of my own, is unheard of, a taste so exotic it is unnatural. i am unnatural and the wants that drive the blood from my veins is unnatural. i cannot slip into the similar lines that the public creates for its gray matter citizens.

i am the word on everyone's lips as they pass by like silhoettes with disdain swimming in their busy minds, filled with half-hearted nighttime passions and the humdrum handshake greetings with strangers met on crowded streets. here i am on display with my emblazoned sweaters and pants and all-wrong hairstyle, the shame flaming on my face and heating my flesh making methe black sheep of this silent movie whose title did not stick on the walls of my mind like it should have. the mobs with their angry pitchforks and fighting torches have not yet arrived, but the march of their well-practiced steps falling into rhythm like rain pounding against pavement echoes in my mind, warning rolls of thunder in the distance.

each movement they take whirs, and the computers calculate their next step and predetermines their next thought. i am not a part of the system. i am the ghost in the machine. something in my hard-drive is not exactly right.

i am the glitch that must be erased, deleted, and forgotten about.

they pass by with their perfect machinery, and i am the word on theirflawless marble lips, the word that passes so freely past gorgeous twin slabs.

"faggot."

and they are right.

i should not be ashamed, but i am.

inspired by a homosexual in the graduating class above me.

sorry for any misspellings. everything i post is typed in notepad, so no spell check.