Christopher C. Jones

Coming Out

I first started coming out when I was
fifteen years old and it was winter in
an isolated rural town high school
very cold I remember because it

was so cold I sat on the radiant
heater during art class and told him my
best friend or the best friend that did art with
me I couldn't come out to my science best

friends like I was coming out to him
his face screwed up and went red to purple
I was fifteen going on sixteen and
I was head over heels in love with him

not in a sex like way I loved him like
I had never loved before he meant so
much to me he rode his bike the ten miles
to my place to spend afternoons with me

and my father drove him and his bike home
at night later I spent a night with him
in a double bed his mother told my
father next morning that she heard no noise

maybe that was best sex between boys was
not the threat loving him was enough threat
and I did love him I regret I could not
show this love if you are an abused child

you learn to withdraw love sad as I feel
there can be no other way I am what I am
made into being child abuse cruel
unforgiving cold no way to tell what

it is like and no one can understand
alone I cry my parents feel distress
but cannot understand it is not faults
they have and cannot also understand

they lash out at my friends abuse frightens
them they cannot be blamed it is not their fault
they did not do this you must understand
did everything they could to protect

me you must understand cannot be blamed
nor can my friends be blamed they did not do
this to me either my parents still not
can be blamed for not understanding this

and to my gratitude they allowed me
to invite many friends for parties on
my parents property letting me have some
of my adolescent innocence and

they understood I know even if they
did it wrong but how to tell your father
your mother what was happening to you
how to say that you have really fallen

head over heels in mad crazy teenage love
with another boy this is child abuse
after we left school he came out to me
and I again came out to him we laugh

and I look back on this like memories
blurred and faded I know these to be
wrecks of my life and knowing to again
start cannot be new ways are invented

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