Came out over a year ago now,

Parents told me get out the house,

Good luck out the closet. Mom blamed

It on the X, the generation or the drugs

I don’t know which. Moved in with

Some friends who didn’t care, started

Dressing in black, stopped

Washing my hair. Grew out my nails

And let the dirt linger there.

My  room was night, thin papers

Echoed across the floor, tubes

And contraptions scattered

Along the floorboards. And again

I summoned the blue-orange flame.

I smelled a rotting corpse inside my head.

It was Kurt Cobain, but he told me

He wasn’t dead. His voice droned:

A mosquito, a mulatto, an albino, my libido.

Anarchy and apathy, twins birthed

From vanity, distortion of truth,

And punk rock on a full moon.

The reluctant King of the outcast teens

Said, “Why ask why?” Or was it,

“Why don’t you ask why?”

Never mind—he reeked of deodorant.

Euphoria clutched my abdomen,

But I could still hear him

As a whir, a vibration at my fingertips,

The sun is gone, but I have a light. 

-Kendall Alexander