lemon light through blinds
#PrideOnThePage Day 10: SILENCE A poem
For Day 10 of VERSE TRAP 2025, we were asked to explore two layered thresholds:
🌀 Where does the lemon light through blinds fall in your world? What sharp, sour, soft, warm things does it illuminate?
and I prompted in my
#PrideOnThePage Day 10 : SILENCE ✨Let silence be a character. What has it seen, and what does it refuse to hold?✨ Where has silence kept you safe—and where has it betrayed you? This prompt asks you to give silence a voice, a memory, a threshold. Let it speak for itself—or let your voice finally rise in its place.
The moment that rose for me was one I rarely speak of—one of the first small cracks in a long-taught silence.
In 1986, I was almost eighteen. Queer, already othered, already carrying what the world had taught me to fear. I had never acted on my longing. I did not dare trust my wanting self—my "corrupt" self as I thought of it then, shaped by parents, teachers, judges, peers.
That afternoon, hiding in a hayloft, lemon light streaked through the barn’s high skylights and landed on me. The air shimmered. The wild cat of silence—my old protector, my old captor—sat with me.
I watched a girl braid a horse’s mane below. I watched the light. I watched my own hands shaking.
And for the first time, I spoke the words aloud—not to her, not to the world, not even yet to myself fully. Just to the dust. To the cat. To the air.
This poem holds that threshold—where silence refused to hold one word any longer.
— Jay
lemon light through blinds
I was in the riding stables—
not my horse, not my place,
never meant to be.
No B Note body, no first places.
I climbed to the hayloft, hiding.
Summer thick on my skin.
Hay sweet in my nose, dust floating,
oak residue, straw scent rising from below.
The air shimmered—afternoon leaning toward dusk.
No full light. Just streaks
through the skylights above the stable doors.
lemon light through blinds of air and dust,
soft on my face, sharp behind my ribs,
warm where it met my wanting.
Silence crouched beside me—
a wild cat, watching prey.
It had kept me company all these years,
sheltering me from isolation I could not bear.
And yet that day—almost eighteen,
knowing I would leave soon,
that this place, these "friends"
would no longer matter—
something in me shifted.
I watched her below, braiding a mane,
quick fingers, sun on her hair.
I read the silence between us,
again and again—
had I looked too long?
Would she look back?
Would she know?
My throat burned with words unspoken,
the words they had taught me to fear—
parents, teachers, judges, peers—
layered in my bones.
Silence flicked its tail. Stay small.
And yet—
lemon light through blinds held me.
A ray, a lighthouse beam.
It lit the sharp press in my ribs,
the sour catch in my throat,
the soft hunger I had buried,
the warm ache of the wanting self
I had not dared name.
I spoke—not to her, not aloud below,
but here, in the loft, to the air,
to the dust, to the cat,
to the part of me still fighting to exist.
I am a lesbian.
Silence did not leave.
It prowled. It watched.
It refused to hold that word for me—
not anymore.
The light stayed—
and so did I.
Thank you all for walking this path with me and accompanying me through this Pride Month and Creative Challenge.
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