Photo by Ira Vishnevskaya on Unsplash
What if, when the internet was invented,
it wasn’t immediately filled with gay porn?
What if what if we had put the desktop computer
in the den instead of the attic.
What if I knew how to cum instead of just
staying hard for hours?
What if Dad had come home on time?
What if I had used proper lube
instead of the Vaseline from your night table?
What if Vaseline was easier to clean quickly?
I had tried straight porn for the hundredth time?
What if I had never held my wrists like that?
What if I had come to you
instead of Dad that night, crying and afraid of myself?
I went to Dad because he never told me not to hold
my wrists like that.
What if holding my wrists like that didn’t look like folding
in on myself?
What if all I wanted was for you to feel powerful and confident?
What if you had shouted This is an ultimatum! at Dad until
he corrected my wrists?
What if Dad had corrected my wrists?
Eben E. B. Bein (he/they) is a biology-teacher-turned-climate-justice-educator at the nonprofit Our Climate. He was a 2022 Fellow for the Writing By Writers workshop and winner of the 2022 Writers Rising Up “Winter Variations” poetry contest. Their first chapbook “Character Flaws” (Fauxmoir lit, 2023) is out and they’ve published with the likes of Fugue Literary, New Ohio Review, and Columbia Review. They are currently completing their first full collection “From the top of the sky” about parent-child estrangement, healing, and love. He lives on Pawtucket land (Cambridge, MA) with his husband and can be found online at ebenbein.com or @ebenbein.