the one about the girl and the closet
A Poem by Tyler Hurula
A Selection from Too Pretty for Plain Coffee by Tyler Hurula (Wayfarer Book 2025) | Bookstore»
From Wayfarer Magazine, Issue 42»
a girl walks into her mother’s closet & says she’s bisexual & the mother hands her a shirt to fold & says you won’t feel that way in ten years & the girl walks into her boyfriend’s arms & says she likes girls & the boy laughs & hands her his cock & the girl starts dating a woman & when her father asks if she’s found a boy at college she gives him the woman’s name & he repeats it three times, Britta Britta Britta & looks around like she’ll parade out of a mirror, Birkenstocks first, preaching the good word of the Indigo Girls, before demanding she not tell her sisters & the girl comes out as polyamorous & her mother fumes an angry message to the girl’s now wife—something about cheating & the girl tells her best friend she’s dating two people & they’re all happy & enamored & everyone who has only ever committed to one person at a time collectively chimes in & says I could never do that while 51% of them file for divorce & the best friend asks about jealousy while loving both her daughters & then ghosts the girl & the girl tells her queer friend she’s dating someone whose pronouns are they & them & the queer friend laughs & says thank God, I was beginning to think you were straight & a primitive boy on a dating app tells the girl he’s fantasizing about her & his wife & the girl is fucking tired of coming out & explaining she’s not here to perform & shrugs off her validation butch & snaps six promise rings from her fingers & bites her tongue clean through & braces herself for the punchline but there is none & she bludgeons her feet against the floor & she shrieks herself hollow & last anyone’s heard she’s still slamming her fists against an echoing closet door
Tyler Hurula (she/they) is the pinkest poet in Denver, Colorado. She strives to be the most queer and polyamorous person they can be. Author of Love Me Louder (Querencia Press). She has been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes. Her next collection, Too Pretty for Plain Coffee, is forthcoming from Wayfarer Books.
