One day my high school English teacher, Mrs. Noble, gave us a homework assignment: bring in eight lines of our favorite poem and read them in front of the class. Some of the kids and moaned and groaned and said they didn’t have a favorite poem and it sounded “bor-ing.” But I panicked. If I read a poem I loved, it would leave me vulnerable and exposed. And yet, to read eight lines I didn’t care about felt like self-betrayal.

When it was my turn to read the next day, I brought my math book with up to the front of the room. At the beginning of the semester I’d made a cover for the textbook out of a brown grocery bag and copies a poem by Poe across the inside flap.

I cleared my throat and looked at Mrs. Noble. She smiled and nodded at me. I read the first eight lines:

From childhood’s house I have not been
As others were–I have not seen
As others saw–I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I lov’d, I lov’d alone.

I tried to read the words in a flat sing-song tone without feeling, so none of the kids would understand what his poem meant to me, but their eyes were already glazed with boredom. I dropped my gaze and walked back to my seat. Mrs. Noble squeezed my arm as I passed, and when I look up I saw she had tears in her eyes. The way she looked at me made me want to cry, too. It was as though she could really see me, and there was no criticism of me in her eyes.

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

(Download a free, legal copy here.)

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