[you're weird. i like it]

"Dear baby sister, Remember that day we blew bubbles together on the front lawn? It was the day I tried explaining the word “gay” to you. It was the day I tried explaining that I was gay to you.  I explained it as sliding down a rainbow into a pool of question marks, I said that gay wasn’t an insult, even though kids at school probably sling it around like salt in wrist wounds. and you laughed. You said that you like rainbows and that being gay made me even cooler. You were nine years old.  You spent the next few weeks making me rainbow crafts and rainbow funfetti cupcakes. You drew me a rainbow map with a rainbow key in case I ever forgot about the doors that sisters leave open and that some beds are meant to be shared.

Dear baby sister, Remember when I stopped coming home? Remember when our secret notes on rainbow paper stopped getting slipped under pillows and put on bed side tables? I miss them.  I miss when you would doodle out all your frustration. You said that someone at school called you gay. You said you looked him right in the mouth and said, maybe. I said I had never been more proud. You were twelve years old. We spent the next few days having the “what to do if this isn’t a phase” conversation. I said I had never been more proud.

Dear baby sister, I heard you’re cutting now. I heard it through the blood line. I never heard it from you.  I never got to see it dribble from your cracked mouth when your eyes were numb shut with middle school. I don’t know what to say. I feel like all your demons live in the back of my throat. Like today couldn’t be long enough.  Like we should have had a talk about how to kill with kindness without hating yourself. We should have had a talk about how to feel like enough when draining everything slowly is the only way to feel like anything. About how our blood can be the bandage when we start bleeding. I should have told you that “gay” is a fake knife, but “bully” leaves scars. 

Dear baby sister,  I’m sorry that my absent letters left you with paper cuts.

Dear baby sister, I wrote you this letter on a rainbow note. I wrapped it in bubbles from back when life was rainbows and funfetti wonderful. I’m leaving this under your pillow. I’ll be home later."