The first and last day in my life
that will never leave my mind;
it's not because it was my 16th birthday,
or even because of the way it felt to finally kiss a boy who, too, genuinely wanted to be alive—
it's the way you feel inside
when it happens, and after it happens, forever.
To know that friendship and love,
mixed well,
can become something even better
sometimes.
Not this time.
Even though I wanted it to be so badly.
Even though I thought I mattered to you.
Even though you were the one who asked
to smash me.
We called being gay 'poodles' then.
You set my mind free
(or so I thought);
you helped me see that love
was really like actually being best friends.
Years later I know that even though the intent behind it was abusive, and disregarded my humanity,
it worked all the more well because it itself was truth;
it was, as the Singapore state would probably have it,
a very particular kind of noble integrity.
A kiss was a 'punch'
and later, a long kiss a 'smash';
I told myself (on your behalf) that this was in case anyone found out
just how fun it was;
in case anyone gatecrashed
your image.
I didn't care
about sacrilege,
and still don't.
This Merlionsman has always known
that his body is ultimately the only thing he owns.
But for five years,
you would go on to treat me like your slave.
You would claim I was threatening you
because I would not go away.
You would claim I manipulated you,
by loving you into being gay.
Only many years later
do I now see how you betrayed
not just me,
but yourself. How you hated
the future you wanted.
How you hated who you were,
and hated anyone who saw past that.
I may have grimaced on October 1, 2008, when I first kissed you,
but it wasn't because I didn't love you.
It was because I was getting rid of projection from the church and the state.
It was because the programming I was force-fed did not glitch, and invited me to hate
myself too.
It invited me to look at myself as an abomination,
just as I am sure it still often does to you,
reader.
But the title of this poem is wrong.
Because you and I can still feel it in these old MSN chatlogs:
love, when real
might still one day
conquer it all.
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