Afterward

(a Matthew Shepard poem)

After I learned what happened
What they did
to your American boy frame-
blond, willowy, privileged-
when they smashed you
into something resembling Cinderella’s coach
meets trash compactor.

I immediately resolved two things:
never to visit the Northwest
and to stop telling people
I wished to engage the love
that dare not speak its name.

But as months pass,
I grow tired of defending
my right to exist and begin to unravel.