Where Have You Gone

My religion teacher gives me a bible and I spend days laboring over the texts, trying to find any mercy in the words.

My best friend finds me later that day and puts on a movie as she takes the book from my hand and replaces it instead with her own.//

I crumble and cannot explain why something so simple is inherently bad.//

When I am 14,

I sit in the middle of a family that hardly knows me, and they laugh, I laugh, until my uncle takes notice of me.

What’s wrong with you, kid? He asks me, and I flinch from the question and my heart hammers in my chest. I’m not ready to tell them.

I laugh it off.//

If they looked me in the eye that day, they would have seen nothing but the terror of a sheep trying to fit in with a pack of wolves.//

My mother whispers in my ear later that night, you can tell me anything.

I wish I could believe her, but my best friend RJ was disowned and came to school bloody last month and I couldn’t risk it.//

When I am 15,

I meet Hannah, whose hands are like silk and lips like honey. She helps me up when I stumble, not looking at me with pity but with softness and concern.

Hannah doesn’t let me fall anymore. Warm arms hold me on the nights I tremble so hard I worry I’ll shatter.//

But her father finds out and by the end of the week she stops talking to me completely.//

There’s more.

Eila, a girl I love so much I could break. She starts to drink and slips from my fingers.

Aaliyah, with a bright smile to take on the world. She decides to close her eyes and never wake up after her parents find out.

James, my best friend, who comes to school one day with hollowness in his eyes. He does not tell and I do not ask.//

[ID: A high school hallway crammed with shoulder-to-shoulder teenagers, about three of whom are wearing masks. End ID.]

This is a high school in my area. This was the first day back. This picture, taken by a student, went viral (ha), and the superintendent was more or less forced to make a statement. It’s long and it’s a lot of bullshit but here’s the big stupid part.

“One area where we have received a good deal of feedback is mask use in our schools. Wearing a mask is a personal choice and there is no practical way to enforce a mandate to wear them. What we will do is continue to strongly encourage all students and staff to wear masks.”

If I have to explain to you the staggering level of bullshit in this statement, then you’ve never been an AFAB person in high school. Tank top? Sent home. Jeans too tight? Home. Collarbones showing? Home. Never mind the application of out-of-school suspension, which is its own kind of bullshit that we’re not here to discuss today. If you can send someone home for showing too much ankle you can send them home for not wearing a mask.

I’ve seen pushback against him on Twitter but they’ve already proven they don’t give a shit what we think, or care about the safety of the students OR staff. Only that things look like they’ve gone back to normal.

Don’t worry Bro , Black Tumblr got you and your Sister.✊🏿

She found a match :)