Onions

In tenth grade Mrs. Repko
taught me that analyzing language
is analogous to peeling an onion.
Surface-level understanding
is the onion’s outer skin,
and empathy
is the burrowed core.
How to read

with understanding. This is empathy.
Wrinkles will appear on faces
that look like layers of an onion.
Some will fold the forehead
when an eyebrow is raised,
others will peel back lips
to show teeth. How to love:
close the laptop, open the door.
Drag a finger across someone’s palm.
Follow the lines down to the wrist.
Read the veins beneath the
surface of skin.
Understand that this is how the body lives,
every pathway
leading to the heart.

Josh takes his shirt off, his stomach is flat.
In his room, dim from the orange-lighting
of the lamp near his bed, hot from the thermostat
he keeps at eighty-degrees,
I feel invasive. Like I was never meant
to see this.
Gay eyes on a straight body.
I read him anyway.
Biceps: skin. Nipples: skin.
Shoulders: skin.
I wish I could run my hand
down his chest
and feel the wrinkles
I cannot see.

Mrs. Repko brought an onion to class
and asked how it was different from
the onion-model that she kept on her desk.
She let us feel the onion. Its bumps.
Its ridges. Its smell.
Its skin reminded me of paper.
Its bulbous shape and reddish color
reminded me of the heart.

Once, when I asked her why she was crying,
my grandmother told me
that cutting onions makes your eyes water.

Once, when she asked me why I was crying,
I told my step-mother
that a boy I liked
didn’t want to be friends with me anymore.
This is how I told her that I was gay.

Finally coming to terms
with my sexuality,
I stayed up late on school nights
writing poetry. It felt like peeling
back my skin to get to the sour core.
I’ve learned these things:
writing is a practice of self-love,
empathy is reading somebody’s self,
and onionskin is a type of paper.

This year, in the dim light
of Josh’s room, I pace, looking
for a calmness I never had.
He sits at the table with his green laptop,
knees pulled up to his chest,
black socks resting on the chair.

He looks so calm in this light.
His brown eyes are stoic gems
that become easier to read
the more I look at them.

From my pocket, I pull out
some folded papers.
What are these?

These are poems about you, Josh.
Please read them. I wrote them for me,
but now they’re for you. I wrote them
because they’re the only way I could love you.
Here is a model of my heart. Please touch it.

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Onions