Name: Once I Loved A Pirate
Duration: P00H02M38S
Description: **This poem is after Doc Luben.**

Once I Loved A Pirate

from Stouthearted Bitch by Julia Gaskill

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about

**This poem is after Doc Luben.**

lyrics

I am seventeen years old
and in love with my best friend.

This girl in the grade below mine
who is obsessed with pirates,
who will running-tackle me between classes,
who has a laugh that can
encompass a high school alcove,
drown my father's minivan,
embrace every limb of me.

When we sit side-by-side at play rehearsals
I always rest my hand close to hers,
hoping one day she will wrap
her tiny fingers ‘round my desperate ones.

She never does.
I never ask her to,

and suddenly I am twenty
and kissing college girls is not a problem,
though they will only kiss me when I am drunk
and only when they too are drunk.

After the meeting of our lips
they always pull away laughing
like my mouth is their favorite joke,
like kissing me is such a silly game we play.

Now I am twenty-nine,
and I do not attend pride parades.
Do not read at queer open mics.
I know how it looks - to be the girl
who’s only ever dated men,
who’s loved women silently her whole life,
who wants to someday marry her boyfriend.

Doesn't matter
how I scribbled love poems for Lindsey and Sarah
in the margins of my pre-calc notes.
How I never wanted
Robyn’s mouth to leave mine.

Doesn't matter
that I have known who I am, what I am
since I was twelve,
a Catholic upbringing so heavy on my shoulders.

Doesn't matter.
My voice has never felt like it mattered in this space.
I tell myself this is fine -
most days I believe it.

I am a PSA for bi erasure.
Standing right in front of you, but
not proof enough, not yell enough.
Forgot to open my mouth again, after all,
I am so good at erasing my own voice.

But here,
here is the proof:

In the laughter of each college girl,
I always pretended that I was kissing
her - the pirate with the boisterous laugh,

and it never worked.
The laughter of these girls
was always too drunken, too high pitched,
not loud enough, not shameless enough,

not beautiful,
never as beautiful
as hers.

credits

from Stouthearted Bitch, released October 19, 2019

license

about

Julia Gaskill Portland, Oregon

Julia Gaskill (she/her) is a professional daydreamer hailing from Portland, Oregon. Her work has been featured on FreezeRay Poetry, Ink&Nebula, SlamFind, Knight's Library Magazine, Write About Now, and more. Julia is the author of four chapbooks, has competed nationally with her poems, runs the mic Slamlandia, and co-founded the Bigfoot Regional Poetry Slam in 2019. ... more