A Love Letter Laid on Sappho's Altar 💌

One of my favorite favorite poems of mine to my inner queer girl reclaiming a lifetime of repressed sapphic desire! 💞

In The Days of Sappho by John William Godward

A significant portion of who I am will always be sapphic because part of me is a girl at heart. Nothing can take that away from me, even if I present mostly masculine now. I’m non-binary in every way 💘

I grew up only loving women

From afar

Curious, shy contact across the room

Falling for each other over the bar

Desire disguised, dressed down

Attraction masked as affection

To be family friendly

Love her as

A friend

A sister

A mother

Never as a lover

Brush fingertips

Kiss her on the cheek

Dodge the lips

Don’t touch her hips

Never the nips

Skeletons of the girls

I was “just friends” with

Crowd my closet

Clamoring for my attention

Haunted by the ghosts of regret

“I swear I’m straight!”

Denial echoes down the hall

What if she would’ve been

My first kiss?

What if we were high school

Sweethearts?

What if I gave my heart to a woman?

What if I had been more

Than friends with

Rachel, Brianna, Quinn

Olivia, Laura, Emilie?

Or countless other names

That escape me now

Words failed me for my feelings

Even as I quietly scribbled stories

With fictional queer characters

As ashamed and confused as I was

Sappho hovering over my shoulder

And powering my pen

To my long lost inner girl,

Queer as can be,

Soothe your restless soul

You’ve paid for your sins

Been fetishized and scorned

But you are innocent

To all the girls I’ve loved before,

Thank you for showing me

I could love you and love myself still

Thank you for tenderly

Taking my hand

And guiding me onto a new path

One with less shade

And abundantly more space

After I was left to wander

In the wilderness

When I had no compass

To point me home

I followed the beat of your

Tell-tale heart

I once was lost

But now I’m found

Second adolescence

I had a second first kiss

Her lips my temptation

Her touch a salve

Sapphic love my salvation,

My birthright

Since womanhood will always

Be a part of me

I’ll be baptized between her thighs

Anointed by holy water

Feed a love letter into her mouth

Our tongues rifling through the pages

Until her kisses taste like

My youth again

And she can have it all

God is a woman

And I’ve been praying

At her altar for hours

As the great lesbian poet

Sappho said,

“In the crooks of your body

I find my religion”

So I bow my head

Count my blessings on her skin

And revel in my sin

Amen