“Friends”

I come as I am.
I know what I am.
But others believe they have the right to change me,
to shame me,
to control me, to destroy me—

even as they refuse to look in the mirror themselves,
unable to understand or love as I can.

Envy, you might call it, but not me.
I feel heartache for them.
They do not know the peace of standing in their own naked skin—
flesh, unmasked, from dawn to dusk,
and through the deep quiet of midnight.

Only I, and only I, hold the mercy and love
that my Father above gave me,
to call them “friend” by name.