Heteronormativity Is __________

Heteronormativity is me having to bite my tongue
When my straight white roommate calls some kid a faggot
Over Xbox like the experience of being a queer
Can be trivialized into your momentary frustration
With a game that you're not good at
In fact, that's kind of what heteronormativity is
Being forced to play a game that your not good at
In fact, a game designed for you to fail at
Where the endgame ends up being the ended lives
Of too many people I care about

Heteronormativity is that night three years ago
When I got a text from my best friend
Saying, I love you, but I don't want to live anymore
And the grief and gash of wondering if this
Is the night that he finally follows through
And the guilt and gash of knowing that he didn't
But secretly hoping that he had
Because sometimes it's easier
To let a down dog die
Then watch it get back up to get kicked back down again.

Heteronormativity is when I was 12 years old
And my grandmother told me she was going to kill me
Because she found gay porn on her computer
And that if I didn't straighten up
She would give me to God and let him have his way with me
And by this point even then hearing the word God
Was me being reminded of every verse
Being used to beat me like a Bible belt
And the cruel irony that the black church adopted the same tactics used by slave-owners
To justify the dehumanization of black slaves
The cruel irony of the once oppressed becoming the instrument of not only their own
Oppression, but the oppression of others

Heteronormativity meant learning early on that survival meant laying low
Till I was old enough to move out and carve a life of my own
And even then going off to higher education
To become surrounded by privately educated Georgia boys
Who for all their culturally rich upbringing in Georgia soil
Still have the audacity to say to me
I like you because you don't act like those other gays
You know the ones that make being gay the only part of their personality
And throw their sexuality into everyone's faces
You're a real bro, bro
Excuse me while I go rant about how many girls I've drunkenly had sex with
Because  I convinced them that I was deep and emotionally vulnerable
By giving them all the same mix-tape of sad, acoustic songs I listen to when I run out of
Budweiser.

I am tired of being silent
My silence won't save me or you
I am inviting you into a conversation
I do not care if you're uncomfortable
Your discomfort does not preclude you
From the responsibility of opening your eyes
And seeing
At the end of the day I will just be angry and sad
And hopeful and trying to be seen

Heteronormativity is you being able to walk away from this poem
 just feeling uncomfortable
While this poem is the only protection I have
in this fight for a chance at a fair fight.