The Look

(theme: forget what they say)
“Look back. Talk back.
I won’t always be around to defend you,”
my mother told me.
Some would call
that strange advice
to give a preschooler with tear filled eyes,
post classmate meanness fest.

Years later,
I would learn to call it wisdom.

Now,
the look I give to homophobes
at street corners who dare
call innocent hand holding
a sign of the Antichrist’s arrival
or to people who stare either
too long or lustily at my twisted frame
could, as the girl I love, puts it,
“Freeze water in the middle of Hades.”