The Savage Lands — The Love That Dare Not Speak its Name.

What Pride Means for Me — a poem

It was of an age where we locked ourselves in gilded cages. Beauty was not ours to see or feel, so we discovered our muses through creative fields. And so we scripted our longings on vellum parchments, composing prose, lyrics and sonnets.

Still, our hearts craved the divinity of the Eros*. Alas, under duress, we had to cast this asunder. We had to conform to your norms and expectations to protect our fragile hearts. Unseen by prying, still in the dark, the passions burned.

The wildfire through the dry fields scorched the land and thus stole beauty from our eyes. Our desires smothered, they never-the-less blossomed in the green shoots that sprouted after the rains.

To validate their ideals, some now use this to cast doubt on your words. Thus twice your heart is taken — and dissipated in the bonfires of the heretics. It was not us who lived a lie. We were coerced into living duplicitous lives. You created the rules that caged our hearts. And yet, you use this to deny our true self aeons after this.

Still, the passion burns, the eternal flames embedded in our words. They seek to deny it, but for those of us who know what they speak, they speak of the love that you sought to deny — the one that dared not speak its name.*

*Eros is part of a triad of gods who played roles in homoerotic relationships, along with Heracles and Hermes, who bestowed qualities of beauty (and loyalty), strength, and eloquence, respectively, onto male lovers.

Conner, Randy P.; Sparks, David Hatfield; Sparks, Mariya (1998). Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol and Spirit. UK: Cassell. p. 133. ISBN 0–304–70423–7.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_love_that_dare_not_speak_its_name

The words above were written after watching the films Benediction and FireBird.

This story is a response to the Prism & Pen writing prompt, My PRIDE Feels Like THIS.

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