a girl with no name

i am friends with the sun. she is everything you'd expect her to be and more, complex and warm and beautiful. she doesn't look at me much, but i can't take my eyes off of her, even when it starts to burn. and, sometimes, i reach out my hand, as if trying to grab onto the light she leaves in her wake before it disappears completely

i guess you could say i'm an anxious person. sometimes i feel like i'm scared of everything. lately, i've noticed that the thing that terrifies me the most is myself.

or maybe you. it's kind of complicated.

i've always been pretty good at pushing things down. after i learned the phrase, "your thoughts shape your reality," i kind of took it and ran with it, i guess. like maybe if i dont acknowledge something, it will cease to exist. like my sexuality. like my feelings for you.

i'm learning that's not how it works.

so, we're here. i've acknowledged it. i've opened up, talked to my sister, my parents, my therapist. i've tried practicing self-acceptance. i've tried praying to a God i can't help but hate. i can go to pride, i can go to church. i can read Sunburn, i can read the Bible. i can move to a place that will accept me for who i am or i can stay in this fuckass town that hates me as much as i do. shove it back down. bury it deep. close my eyes and wait for it to go away.

but i think deep down i know it never will.

it was bad enough to like girls. i still find myself looking up pictures of attractive guys just begging to feel something, anything, begging whatever higher power that may be to make me normal. so when i found myself thinking of you in a different way for the first time two years ago, i buried it deep without a second thought. it couldn't be you. it could never be you.

and for a while, it almost worked. turns out you can convince yourself anything is platonic if you lie to yourself hard enough. but then i started talking. i opened up about my deep-rooted internalized homophobia, my complicated relationship with religion, how i lie to everyone and say i'm on the asexual spectrum because i feel disgusting enough just liking women, let alone wanting to have sex with one. and i think i opened up some boxes in the attic of my brain that i should've, fuck i really should've left untouched, because now things are spilling out that i buried for a reason and my brain is filled with chaos and i am losing it, emma, i am. and you were coming over and i was excited, really excited and you were on my mind like you always are and then, then i had the thought, the thought that ruined fucking everything.

because it was platonic, i told myself it was platonic because it had to be platonic, it couldn't be anything more. i bury things for a reason. but then i thought, "i think i might be in love with her," and everything came crashing down, just minutes before you arrived.

and then i was with you and you were asleep on my shoulder and i could hear God screaming at me, i could feel the flames on my skin like a warning of what was to come but, just for a moment, i didn't even care. and then you woke up and i saw your face and i wondered how an angel like you could ever burn in hell because i was certain God had created no greater masterpiece. and then i heard your tired voice and in that moment i wondered if you had been God all along. i think that, when i was sitting there with your body curled into mine, that was the first time i truly understood religion. i fear God, sure, but i don't think i'd ever known worship until that moment.

but at the end of the night, i still went to bed with my hand on my bible. i still went home and prayed, begged for forgiveness for the sin that was loving you.