I am Queer and I am here

I am queer. I am queer. I am queer, and I'm here.
I'm not heterosexual, and I'm not my body.
I taste these words as they escape my tongue, leaving my throat dry as fear fills me.

I am afraid of being myself in a world where "my kind" have our flesh adorned with knives merely for existing.

And I'm afraid of existing.

I'm afraid that my non-conformity and my non-binary true me doesn't have a place among my peers:
that I'm meant to remain outside closed circles, dull and dreary.

So I hold my breath and force myself to sink instead of swim in this vast ocean of hatred that I don't think I can overcome;
I welcome the river of three crossings, hoping to find solace in the divinely shallow afterlife.

But instead of witnessing the rapture, I have my skin painted with self-loathing as spite rains upon me, and when I try to rid myself of these spit stains I'm drawn toward building barricades of masks around me with the behemoth demons in my heartbeats pounding.

Because I am queer, and I am here. I look around me and in the abyss I stare into I am shown the light of love and endurance --

I am queer, and I am here, and I'll survive. I will wear the heavy scars on my back as monuments to my survival indeed, and I'll overcome the fear and the self-destruction --

because I am queer and I am here, and I'm not alone.