How Could I Know?

I was fifteen,
sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor,
arguing with myself
as if my heart were a courtroom
and I had been called to testify.

"How can you know?" I asked.
"You've never dated anyone.
You've never kissed anyone.
You've never held a girl's hand
except to help her across a stream."

It seemed like a reasonable question.

Maybe I was confused.
Maybe I had watched too many movies.
Maybe I just admired girls,
wanted to be like them,
wanted to be near them.

But then another thought arrived,
quiet and stubborn.

The boys in my class
called themselves straight every day.
No one questioned them.
No one demanded evidence.

No one asked,
"Have you kissed a girl yet?"
before believing them.

No one said,
"Maybe wait until you've had a relationship
before deciding."

They simply knew.

And if they could know,
why couldn't I?

I thought about the way my pulse raced
when she smiled at me.
The way I remembered
every word she said,
every joke,
every glance.

I thought about the futures I imagined
when no one was watching.

Not one of them
included a boyfriend.

Not one.

The answer wasn't hidden.
It wasn't buried beneath confusion.

It was standing in the center of the room,
hands in its pockets,
waiting patiently for me to stop arguing.

Maybe I had never been kissed.

Maybe I had never fallen in love.

Maybe I had no experience at all.

But I knew who made my heart
forget its rhythm.

I knew whose names
I wrote in the margins of my notebooks.

I knew who appeared in my dreams.

And suddenly the question changed.

It was no longer,
"How could I know?"

It became,

"Why do I keep pretending
that I don't?"

I wasn't confused.

I wasn't mistaken.

I wasn't too young to understand.

I was simply a girl
learning the truth about herself.

And the truth,
once spoken aloud,
felt wonderfully simple.

All I know is this:

I am gay.

© Susie Stiles-Wolf