There's This Girl Though

I was crushing on a girl to the annoyance of my friends. I tried to find a historical justification for it. Like I'm sure this is the feeling behind the gay rights movement. It all starts with this crazy pit-of-your-stomach feeling.

I want to write this essay tonight

there’s this girl though

I’m stuck on the thought of her like sinking

in quicksand

or a mire

or maybe more like sinking in honey

because

I can’t move

but I will gladly succumb to the sweetness of

her smile.

I can’t stop thinking about

how she’s beautiful

like Midwestern lightning storms are beautiful

She is so full of electricity and rain

And I can’t believe she was born in Iowa

like I thought the only things that grew-up in Iowa were corn and thunderstorms.

and I know I have obligations this weekend because it’s homecoming

but there’s this girl though

and I just want to see her

because her eyes are the color of that top layer of ice on a lake in the winter when it is finally strong enough to skate across

And like cornflowers in the summer blowing along a fence post in a field

somewhere in Iowa

and I just want slide into them until the seasons change from

cornflowers to ice and back again

and you said don’t be stupid

it’s just some girl you just met

But it is 1955 and

I just want to go out

into neighborhoods like broken glass

to the only bars we have

Where the lights of the squad car flash blue and red like blood veins in the window

I know I’ll be beaten by the police

until I bleed her name onto the sidewalk

Because I am not wearing three pieces of women’s clothing.

I should stay home

but there’s this girl though

and she’s pulsing through me

until my weathered veins are just frayed wire

because I need to see her tonight

like maybe tonight is the only night we’ll have

because who knows what will happen tomorrow

It is 1970 and

I’m the lavender menace

In your women's movement

Even though I live the principles of feminism

out loud it echos in my ribcage

I’m coming out of the closet and into the streets

my heart on my sleeve and

it might cost me my job, my family, my life

I could ignore this beating in my chest but

there’s this girl though

she makes me want to rip free my heart

and hold it in raised in my fist and rush into the street

chant with the rhythm of my naked heart

“gay and proud,

gay and proud,

gay and proud!”

My love laid bare on the pavement

it is 1975

And I am in the Michigan woods

drunk on radical feminist notions

and beer

I Want to grow a sisterhood

from a single seed

see the lesbian nation rise with the sun.

maybe I won’t do it more than one year

there’s this girl though

and I feel her in my skin

this itch to hold her in public

to raise her up

and tell her I love the way the sunlight reflects off

her body

that I just want to howl at the moon

because she is wild. feral. female.

I’ll rise like this moon every August

for four decades over this land

to welcome her home.

it is 2015

I want to take my love to the highest law of the land

to make her my…

well wife doesn’t quite fit

like man and wife

But we never fit quite right

like a key into the traditional lock of matrimony

but our love needs security

to replace our mountain of precarious legal paperwork

with two words “I do.”

Is it marriage?

there’s this girl though

and when I look into her eyes

I see ourselves at 80

I and see our babies

I want them to call us both mom

I want to be the last one to look into her eyes and hold

her on our worst day at the hospital

and I want to make eye contact with my family

when I say “this is my life.”

All the revolutions of herstory

wouldn’t have happened but

there was this girl though

and she’s the spark

that changed the world