My mother pulls at my self-constructed outfit with a tight-lipped smile stretching the cheeks she passed down to me. Says that my colors aren't in season or that I have no waist here or that my skirt is too short and I cannot take it, yet I stomp away to follow orders and change.
My sister, four years my junior, rolls her eyes at my raucous laughter, my animation and admiration by the fault of ideas embodied on projected screens. Tells me they're just stories and you're so weird and calm down and I will not stand for this! Yet shame rolls in me once the elation has ebbed and poison tugs at my brainstem when the boy from Spanish catches my eye--but he'll think I'm weird!
My father grumbles and switches stations before the reporter can say the second syllable of "gay rights," gripes with my mother about Colorado's newly legal "potheads" with the "dude" thrown in for extra spite. Says that this movie may not be appropriate and you're not going to New York and why do you keep sabotaging yourself? and I hold my tongue.
My little conservative Christian family portrait. Parents from small towns, perfect church attendance records, with at least one daughter determined to carry on the family legacy. That daughter who wearies her mother with acidic judgements passed in secret, that daughter who knows exactly what she believes and what she wants and will get it no matter the cost. The daughter I want to learn from, but instead lock myself away from and back away from being glared upon. My little conservative Christian family portrait--except in it I have but half a face, the other cut away from the lens's short sight because I need to be free. Free from the hate that tumbles unwittingly from their lips, free from the loving eyes that endanger my open range, free from the shelter they have provided for me. There are wings beating madly against my teeth and half-formed passions threaten to slip out and make them angry but at least I will be free!
But not yet. Not all the way, because some things out there are wrong, I do agree. But because I am not you and I am me I have known what you refuse to and that is: there is no way that one can speak walls of hate around themselves and be free.
My sister, four years my junior, rolls her eyes at my raucous laughter, my animation and admiration by the fault of ideas embodied on projected screens. Tells me they're just stories and you're so weird and calm down and I will not stand for this! Yet shame rolls in me once the elation has ebbed and poison tugs at my brainstem when the boy from Spanish catches my eye--but he'll think I'm weird!
My father grumbles and switches stations before the reporter can say the second syllable of "gay rights," gripes with my mother about Colorado's newly legal "potheads" with the "dude" thrown in for extra spite. Says that this movie may not be appropriate and you're not going to New York and why do you keep sabotaging yourself? and I hold my tongue.
My little conservative Christian family portrait. Parents from small towns, perfect church attendance records, with at least one daughter determined to carry on the family legacy. That daughter who wearies her mother with acidic judgements passed in secret, that daughter who knows exactly what she believes and what she wants and will get it no matter the cost. The daughter I want to learn from, but instead lock myself away from and back away from being glared upon. My little conservative Christian family portrait--except in it I have but half a face, the other cut away from the lens's short sight because I need to be free. Free from the hate that tumbles unwittingly from their lips, free from the loving eyes that endanger my open range, free from the shelter they have provided for me. There are wings beating madly against my teeth and half-formed passions threaten to slip out and make them angry but at least I will be free!
But not yet. Not all the way, because some things out there are wrong, I do agree. But because I am not you and I am me I have known what you refuse to and that is: there is no way that one can speak walls of hate around themselves and be free.
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