They strap you to the chair with scripture and diodes,
promise the current will burn the wrong desire clean.
A priest, a therapist, a father with clenched jaw—
all swear this is love, this measured violation
of your wiring.
Week after week the voices drill:
You are broken code. We will rewrite you.
Hormones withdrawn, affection withheld,
memories of your own skin recast as sin.
They teach you to flinch at mirrors,
to apologize for the shape of your longing.
In the aftermath, the survivors carry
shards of themselves like contraband.
Anxiety blooms into permanent static.
Depression settles heavy as wet concrete.
Some learn to recite the approved prayers
while the real self rots in the basement of the throat.
Statistics wear no halos:
elevated razors, pills, ropes—
the quiet arithmetic of erased futures.
Families clap for the hollowed boy who no longer kisses boys,
celebrate the girl who flinches at her own reflection.
The institutions call it treatment.
The body keeps the receipt.
This is not healing.
This is alchemy in reverse—
turning gold into ash,
naming the smoke "progress."
Yet some crawl out anyway,
tongues still tasting metal and shame,
eyes learning again how to hold another’s gaze
without apology.
The damage does not vanish.
It echoes.
It testifies.
Conversion is just another word
for the slow murder of truth.
We name it.
We refuse it.
We carry the unfixable forward—
alive, furious, whole in our defiance.
-
Author:
Matthew R. Callies (
Online) - Published: June 6th, 2026 01:27
- Comment from author about the poem: Poem 6 for Pride Month. This poem is about the horrendous practice of "conversion therapy". For some information about what that entails, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy
- Category: Unclassified
- Views: 6
- Users favorite of this poem: Tristan Robert Lange, Syd
- In collections: 🔥Trending🔥, The Continuance of Us.
Online)
Comments3
It is so difficult for most to accept anyone different than themselves in belief. physical appearance (be it skin color, weight), sexual orientation. We are a prejudiced lot. A poem very nicely written that addresses this. Well done my friend
Matthew, this really moved me. What stays with me is how relentlessly human the poem remains. Beneath the institutional language, the arguments, and the attempts to reshape people into something else, there are actual lives bearing the consequences. The anger feels earned because it grows from that reality. A powerful and uncompromising piece, my friend. 🌹🖤🙏🕯️🐦⬛
Conversion therapy is shocking. Love is love. I read they used to use lobotomies years ago. Truely awful.
- Syd
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