Dustin E.

by Andrew Williams

I jogged and you lapped me endlessly on your bike in the park until speech traveled from our eyes to our lips.

You advertised the benefits of biking over jogging and it was easy marketing on me. We planned bike rides and bike rides in that simple Choctaw Creek Park. We slipped into our own reality where trees were mazes to be charted and any patch of dirt was an invitation to explore along bike paths only we could see.

Magnets don’t need to know why they are drawn, The secret is in being who they are. Finally, I was outside my own head, and out from in front of the mirror. I could just be, and respond to you, and we were drawn.

The metal click of changing gears and silent pedals. Sweat and sunscreen. Taking on the hill, conquering it and the world it sat upon. That glorious, deep downhill stretch, cruising side by side.

You were always the better cyclist than me, but there was never a competition. I don’t remember any tricks you did, but remember our shouts of celebration. Noises never scared us – we were a noise, partakers in the park, inhabitants of the wild, usually startling children and adults on accident. In the backwoods again we should have stopped to pee, not because we couldn’t hold it, but because it was the backwoods and we didn’t have to.

We took swimming lessons together …even though we had no access to a pool anywhere. You played a board game with me …even though my mother played, too.

I know why magnets are drawn. They are made of light the human eye can’t see but the body knows. Organs push blood and light to keep me alive, feeding my skin The bloods stays but the light shines through my pores Blasting into the sky like a flare of blue light And that’s what we saw in each other that day in the park.

You wanted to take a vacation together and it was my turn to respond. I was myself, and yet also becoming. Coming out.

But that is not my greatest shame or regret. My father had asked me, “Is Dustin gay?” I gave the technical answer, “I don’t know” because we never consummated with even one kiss or holding hands. I got scared and I never spoke with you again.

I didn’t know it then, but Father had a bucket of black tar he poured onto my hands and my chest. But not for my skin— it seeped in. A steady supply to eclipse until I took the bucket from him and put it on myself every day.

I leaned away from you when I should have leaned in.

And I had Virgin’s Fallacy

That love comes like a storm and would fall at my feet in Thunder and Lightning, And friends for life start with intimacy and all-knowingness. But friends aren’t found—they’re made. Adventures aren’t looked for—they’re created. Tangible love beyond chemical reactions is not soaring, flying, or falling. Never falling.

It’s not a master plan with hindrances of sexuality or something silly like soul mates.

It’s two guys who met at a park, then chose to go biking again and again One day hot with sweat another day cold with sweat. Maybe someone would ask if I ever saw you again, if I would let you go, But I don’t think of it like that. I would just be myself

And you would be yourself, And we’d choose our life together every day. Adventure, excitement, and safety. At least now I know what love feels like because it will feel like you.

Do miracles happen?

Is enough of the poisonous tar gone for you to see me now?

Can your body sense the blue flame?

Will we hold hands afterward if we go biking again?

Do you feel it like I do

Or did the poison defile memory?

If miracles happen, If God is Love, if heaven is real,

When life lessons and punishments are over I won’t be in the throne room.

Angels can’t enchant me.

I’ll be in the outermost realm of the expanding universe Biking with you in the park.

The universe inside me

We don’t know why we’re sad Is it what you had done?

Or was it me this time?

What We Are

by L. Smith

Never will we truly know

For the difference between you and I Is the same for I and you

We hold these feelings with ownership

Without the knowledge they aren’t ours

We take, control, and destroy

What we already are

We play with the earth

And sing with the sun

We cry to the moon

But can’t undo what we’ve already done.