The undercover bisexual walks in wearing her best flannel and jeans––
(it’s funny because the bisexual doesn’t really need an alias)

if it isn’t a big t-shirt that says SUFFERING SAPPHO, it must be straight––
and the fundamentalist never sees it coming.

The fundamentalist even overwhelms the bisexual
with cascades of rainbow emojis

because the fundamentalist only remembers
that queer people exist

when it’s time to complain.
It’s June 2nd (of the dumpster-fire year of 2016)

Happy Pride Month!
but not to the fundamentalist;

she’s angry because Obama
turned June gay.

The bisexual sits cross-legged on the couch,
starts to scratch the cloth with her just-trimmed nails,

but when the fundamentalist pauses her lecture
to make damning eye contact and say, The gays are going. To. Hell.

the scratching stops. Does she know?
And how could she not?

The fundamentalist is my mother.

The fundamentalist’s voice climbs higher as she speculates on how to help
the gays, and what this scene really needs is a ba dum tss.

It’s funny.
And I’m considering which wine washes down bigotry best.

I hide in the bathroom.

I mean, it’s not the closet,
but does it still count if I look at GIFs of girls kissing in there?

Later, my mother and I take a walk in the park
and hold hands––which is fine when it’s not in a gay way–– are you laughing?

and discuss the safest of topics: work and the weather.
How a storm can emerge out of a few flurries.

My mother even chatters like it’s an honest conversation.
I go home and down a glass of Moscato.

Fight the urge to throat-punch anyone who’s ever tried
to tell me, You never know—she could surprise you.

No, she fucking will not.  My dad had a gay sister—she’s dead now—
and I heard my mom’s voice drop every time she said her name.

She even complained when she had to go to the lesbian’s funeral.
That’s how I learned to hate.

I didn’t go to the funeral.
Didn’t see myself reflected in a coffin;

didn’t bury the only relative I know who’s like me.
I said I was straight back then.

Isn’t it funny? How my mother
would bury the gay inside me,

even if it meant burying the rest of me, too?
Hilarious.

# # #

Alayna Hinson is a middle school teacher in Colorado. When she’s not writing, she loves to geek out, cuddle with her dog, and binge-watch TV. Her poems have previously been published in Germ Magazine, USRepresented, and Eskimo Pie, as well as other publications.

Photo: Anthony Tran