lesbians are people too

thoughts hang in the air like the remains
of shattered shards of chandeliers--
once a well-hung girl, poised above the dinner table
where vultures ate and ate and ate
her soul until she was nothing more
than the fragments of an empty shell.

she had hung in very long,
and she had played very hard,
for she was hard; she was crystal, dark crystal
to hide the scars and burns of past memories
and fatigue and stories that no one wants to tell
in the shadows and darkness.

held she the power, the ambition to change the world,
but the world changed her and those scars
became stars.

and maybe she saw in black and white
like the early watchers,
or maybe she saw in technicolor
but if she did
it was more red, black, and white.

it surprised her how the girl's name
came so easily to mind
but rolled so cautiously off her tongue.
she liked to let it roll off,
let it wallow in the heat of her mouth
before escaping with sound
into the harsh cold world.

in her was the devil;
in her was an angel,
two poles combined into one:
and the doctors called it bipolar disorder.
in her was the melancholy;
on her was the proof:
and the doctor called it depression.
in her were the numbers;
in her was the fear:
and the doctors called it obsessive-compulsive disorder.

by fourteen she had been marked and labeled
so many things
and her parents called it:
attention-seeking disorder.
but they did not know the tales,
they did not know the terror,
and they did not know the girl who had 'corrupted' her
was the same girl who had saved her life.

they did not know that the love was real,
that she loved the girl,
and she was not too young to know,
and that there was nothing they could ever do
to change what it was.

they did not accept their lesbian daughter.
they did not love their little girl.