To The Friend Poem by Maya Hanson

To the friend who once told me
"I don't really buy the whole gay thing."

You do not need to buy it.
We are not selling,
we are giving the whole of ourselves to you.

We do not stretch with your fingers,
rubber bands flung into corners,
ricocheting off the wall,
elastic collisions that come back just as hard.
We come back twice as hard.

We do not mold with your hands,
glued to gray while you steal the colors,
spent like blood money to make you feel kind.

We build something strong together
but we are so much more than that,
we are all creatures
when you strip us down to bone.

We are not something
you need to understand.
We are something
you need to listen to.

Can you taste
the worth we sprinkle on this world?