When I was 15 they wrote in the boys' bathroom
above of one of the urinals that I was a lesbian.
I knew it wasn't true. Maybe they did too,
but not hating lesbians was almost as bad as being one,
besides I was a feminist and smart enough
to talk even the angriest man into a logical corner.

They didn't call me lesbian because they thought I was.
They called me lesbian to scare me, and it did,
though I don't think even fear would have kept me silent.
I knew I wasn't a lesbian.
I liked men so I was straight.

And I accepted that without question
for all those years.
It was enough for them, after all.

Only when I left, came to college,
and found myself lost in the vision
of the female body did I know
what they said was true,
but not in the ways they said it.

The possibility of both,
having never existed for me, was terrifying.
I kept it inside, a secret I would not admit even to myself,
because it shook my world too thoroughly
reminded too much of those words on the bathroom wall
and the punishment those words could bring.

But there is a space in the middle of the rainbow
that is neither straight nor gay