prompt: sun / title: pattern-welded damascus in misc. flash fiction

Sitting in the audience of a poetry reading by a handful of brilliant folk, at my tender age of 45, I finally realize something I couldn’t put into concrete word until that very moment and so I’ve an obligation to jot it down here and repeat out-loud later: I have no idea how to really receive love.

Let me back up from my ‘blunt statement of point as opening’, a parlor trick I fall upon so often.

It was romantic poems for Valentines by genius friends, already twice-delayed by the unrelenting brutality of Adirondack Winter. I brought no material as I’ve been single for what feels seventeen thousand years, I was glad to just support my comrades. Doubly so their theme was the poetry of queer-loves, gay-loves, lesbian-loves, trans-loves and as an aging straight man, whatever words I haven’t burned about ex-girlfriends and un-requiteds would have no reasonable place there. And, anyway, my voice was shot from Guns ‘N’ Roses karaoke two eves prior, it was the perfect night for listening and supporting, without interjecting all my tired formulaic fancy-university bullshit.

So, I listened, really listened, none of the distractions that come with late rewrites, debating tones in line-reads, considering how much I could recite from my memory for dramatic effect. No, just listened to love-poetry by folks who had to hide their love away behind code-words and doors, in debate with all the other identities in their lives other than gender and sex all the while, at risk of jail or even death, and yet their loves and all their gut-punch words about those complications to their loves endured. They gave and received love anyway despite all the prejudicial horrorshows.

And here I am, with not one-tenth of one-thousandth the barriers these women and men endured for romance and connection, with not one one-trillionth of the courage they had shown for loves that got them thrown out of their churches, thrown out of their homes, yet still held to that ardor.

And there I was, a well-intentioned fumbling attempted ally in the back, unable to process what would come so much more easily to me, that they had to claw and fight and die for, just because I never really learned how to accept love from others, as I oft hate myself so goddamned deeply.

Like Saul on The Damascus Road, rising back up as Paul after being blinded by the brilliant sun, it finally occurred to me: if my friends can fight so very hard for loves the rich folks would deny them, I owe it to the world to fight for my less-fraught values as well. Stop thinking I’m just my fat belly and weird nose, to be settled for at best. If my friends can be invincible, I can be a little strong. Because I cannot love myself, I don’t know how to fully receive it, but with inspirations from my amazingly resilient friends, I’m going to try and figure out how to learn that. Somehow.