Fooling Around?

Fooling around?

“Fool,” you said on your way to the local Basket and Bottle

The off license down our road as you walked pass Susanne.

Susanne Atewogbade smiled as though nothing had happened.

Susanne Atewogbade walked on by following her gramp’s

Wise, wise words… “they are only fooling around! It’s nothing”.

Susanne Atewogbade was proud of her trans and homo status.

“It’s a shame,” she said. “I’d never go back to Nigeria, never!”

“But why not?” asked Max a week after rejecting Susanne’s hand.

Susanne Atewogbade felt uneasy knowing Nigeria’s hateful fever.

“Was Max, her friend, a reverse homophobe?” she thought.

Susanne Atewogbade laughed when she heard Max’ tittle-tattle

Away, “whom does he think he’s fooling?” Was Max a friend at core?

Susanne Atewogbade reported her to the police and they laughed

Too. Oh the laughed and laughed, “Sorry love, stop being a bore!”

“What buffoons,” thought Susanne Atewogbade of the uniformed thugs!

“Are they fooling around? I was just being me,” said Susanne, smiling.

“When Doreen said that. I’m just a being in a world of folly!”

Susanne Atewogbade loved watching or listening to transphobes

As they fooled around, as they taught children to bully

Those like Susanne Atewogbade: gay with friend who weren’t

What they seemed; what they seemed; who weren’t what they seemed.

Susanne Atewogbade was never one for making a fuss at homophobes.

One day, having experienced a transphobe’s transphobia during a call.

Susanne Atewogbade felt Max, her friend, sucked up to transphobes.

“But why?” Susanne Atewogbade asked her gramp who laughed; laughed?

Yes, Laughed saying, “What did I tell you, Susanne dear? People just

Love fooling around!” Susanne Atewogbade’s smile waned for the first

Time in years. “Don’t let that stop you darling, they are just insecure.

That’s why,” said gram, dead now ten years. Susanne felt a thirst

For life, so she grabbed it smiling and get on with it still smiling, smiling!

Mia Nikasimo © October 2010