“All you can do is accept that you are both the victim and the perpetrator in this complicated web.” –Mingjie Zai

“July 6th”

Fiction. Based on a True Coming Out.

By Nikki Wicz

This journal entry is inspired by true events. Some of the characters, names, businesses, incidents, and certain locations and events have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes. Any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely coincidental and unintentional

On July 6th you come out
To your mom in a Zoe’s kitchen;

she cried. 

You’re not sure if it’s
Because her favorite child 
Is going to hell 
Or because she realized
You’re afraid of her
Power over you. 

The truth comes out
In barrel rolls off your tongue
And at first neither of you are phased
Because the truth had always
Been somewhere between you
Hiding in the seems 
Of laughs

But then it hits you both
What you’ve admitted to
you want to evaporate

Because you are free 
From the womb’s hold
And yet
Disappearing into the air
Around you. Dispersing 
Into the queer-web
That her christian eyes
Have spun. 

She is the spider
That has caught you
And feeds on your 
Obedience, and now
You are starving her. 

You were the last 
Of your siblings to 
Have broken away
Somehow. Your brother
Had always fought
To fly freely, and your sister
Cut herself into oblivion. 
We have all shamed
The church. 

And this, you think, 
Is what makes spiders cry. 
Watching their food escape
Their carefully crafted
Trap.