Ogden’s Patrick Ramsay performed his poem “How To Talk About It” Saturday night during the second annual Ogden Pride Festival. Ramsay, a creative writing major at Weber State University was the winner of the Ogden Pride Poetry Slam, held in July at Booked on 25th in downtown Ogden. “I’ve been writing since I was a kid,” Ramsay said. “My mother raised me with a passion for reading and writing.” 

”How to talk about it”

Poem by Patrick Ramsay

Let me preface this by telling you

I’m pretty quiet person. There are a few reasons why, but mainly,

Being quiet is easy. You just sit back and witness.

It’s comfortable for me —

Or it was.

On June 12, 2016, I half-woke up in the middle of the night

To reports in the media of a world trembling. Hoping

it was a nightmare, I fell back into a restless sleep

And woke up later that morning to a higher death toll.

The world is crying now. I’m part of that world.

It shakes and I shake with it. I can hear my own pulse that morning.

Pulse. Pulse. Pulse. I close my eyes and try to hear my friends’

pulses too. There are 49 less pulses.

In a group text message with my best friends,

We say how much we love each other.

The world is still crying.

We don’t know how to talk about it,

but we learn their names. It’s important that we know them.

I don’t know how to respond.

I break up with my boyfriend that night because

All I can think about is how he told me that one reason

He liked me was because he couldn’t tell that I was gay.

How when I told him that I was getting a yoga membership,

He said that was “too gay.” How I, a quiet person already,

Was consciously speaking less. And when I did speak,

It was deeper. Mimicking the bro talk of a macho ass hole.

The world is still crying, and I’d spent the past few months,

Maybe even the past years trying to turn someone on

With strategic linguistics. How messed up is that, man?

I knew now how to respond.

I thought about all the times I was told to be quiet.

I thought about terror telling love in Orlando to be quiet.

And the word that kept coming back to me was “louder.”

I need to be louder.

Louder for my friends. Made family by our trials.

Louder for the time my sister said, “they should be able

To get married, but they shouldn’t be able to call it marriage.”

Louder for the time my father scoffed and rolled eyes at the headband I was wearing

To hold back my long and swooping hair. I thought it was beautiful but I cut it a few days later.

Louder for the parts of me I’m still afraid of.

Louder for the hairy-legged man in a tight sequin dress.

I stare at him in the elevator because butterflies

are rare in beehives.

Louder because it feels so good to walk down 25th

proud to be holding a hand as big as mine while we hopped

over sidewalk cracks and nearly danced

through every crosswalk. That was a good day.

Louder because his mother needs to know that even though

I don’t have the body to feed her grandchild or to fill a dress,

I could find room on my hip for the child of her son

And real space in my heart to love it no less.

Louder because the leading cause of death among Utah children ages 10-17 is suicide.

Louder because there’s a reason for that.

Louder because 600 children.

The world is still crying.

Louder because the Chief medical examiner of Utah says

“We’re certainly on track for being over 600 this year.”

Because we’re talking numbers now,

Think about it this way: The collective empty

seats could fill 29 classrooms. Now, imagine

Walking through an empty school.

Louder for the seventh grader who packaged

Every word in masculinity before it fell out his mouth.

Louder for the kid who is in bed at night not sleeping

but begging God to make him straight.

Let me tell you a secret, sweet child

the power of prayer won’t fix what isn’t broken.

I wish someone had told me that.

Louder because I kept the real me so folded up

And hidden away that even though I’m here now,

I’m still trying to iron out the wrinkles.

Louder because love isn’t meant to be silenced.

Louder because people aren’t meant to be silenced.

A month later, we’re talking about it, and it almost feels like we’re talking about 9/11.

We get into the “Where were you when it happened?” types of conversations. We wipe each

other’s tears and decide to be

Louder because Orlando.