will you come look at me

never a bridesmaid, five leagues from a bride. i couldn't be a yuppie. i couldn't have a sorority house and an electric car. i could hardly even have a meal plan.

and i am now more different than i have ever felt my difference to be. i have never felt more out of place, more inappropriately jigsawed, more impossibly severed and segregated from the noble and understandable parts of standardized goals.

this is how the wind of unconscious stigma blows down a hollow hallway. this is how i bend beyond feeling pathetic for my privileged attempt at opression unseated, because it simply is. i simply am not what an embracing sub-society arrayed around me expects, wants, needs me to be.

who would gather to watch two autistic lesbians kiss? who would divide themselves across sides of the aisle? who would paint petulant pastels for a short groom with obsessive-compulsive disorder and a tall bride with chronic fatigue?

there's no dress to pay for. there's no dream.

when everyone's doing the electric slide, one half will be sitting down, watching the young people that aren't there stumble into each other and hide their faces from the photographer that isn't there, and wondering where the other half is, that isn't there.

no happy parents. no long-suffering friends. no dances of fathers and daughters and mothers, and no sons.

i don't know why i want it. i don't know if i want it. i know i'll have to pay my colleagues, musicians, to be there.

we are always afraid of being looked at. we are always terrified, mortified, of being seen. so how could we possibly ask?

will you come look at me? will you come listen to the sound of my boots marching to an endpoint with purpose, without rushing, without embarassment and shame?

will you come look at her? will you come feel the joy of her presence and her enchantment, her utter fascination, with the tiniest things?

you don't know her. you never will. how could you, when my body barely permits me to smell her, to taste her?

there are no silly strangers to seat with each other. there are no common connections to be made.

such a lot of money for nothing at all; such a tremendous façade to put on in order to expose ourselves.

will you come look at me, bare-faced, gazing solemnly at everyone i have ever survived to truly love, and believe that i want you to?