I went to a straight, white church.
And I prayed and I prayed, and I prayed
Prayed for normalcy
Prayed for straightness
Prayed to be right.
And nothing happened.
No divine intervention like Isaiah
No curation of my curiosity like the camps they shut down
No straightness cleansing me like the river Jordan.

I looked around and saw the white clerical faces
Pray.
Pray for good fortune
Pray for peace and love
Pray for their biggest wishes
Or so I thought.
After all, they’re just thoughts and prayers
Without action
We can’t blame it
Or maybe just I do
And does that make me any better
Than the straight white faces I watch kneeling
Hands clamped together
Repentance on their minds?

The straightness parted ways like the Red Sea
And in flooded the homosexuality
The “deviance”
The “wrong”
The defining feature of existence.
White became a spectrum of colors
And prayers became uproars
When the first brick was thrown
In 1969

I built my ark
And sailed down the rainbow river
That was created by trailblazers before
My time.
Without a second glance or thought
Without clamping my hands
And begging to fix the unshattered pieces of my mind
That were carefully placed together
By the voices that did not throw stones
At two men who lie but rather to craft a
Roof and four walls that may house our
Actual loving Maker version who Whispers Gospels of Acceptance
Instead of sirens of sin.