Larry Benjamin's Blog: Larry Benjamin's blog - This Writer's Life - Posts Tagged "teachers"

This week's flash fiction was brought about by a graphic I recently saw on the internet.

It resonated with me because the idea that gay youth aren’t broken is the central theme of my semi-autobiographical, coming of age/romance novel, Unbroken. So this week I'm posting an excerpt from Unbroken. In this scene, fifteen year Lincoln, bullied at home and at school, is without hope until a teacher rescues him. It is a very personal story. In my case it was a female teacher who told me it was okay to be myself, that I wasn’t broken. Her name was Fran Scioli. She died without me ever being able to say thank you. So this post is really a way for me to thank her publicly.

Silence

I spoke late and when I eventually discovered words, I spoke to my parents of little things, childish things. Distracted, they paid no attention to my words but they noticed my hands. Stop it with the hands, they said. They flutter like little birds, they said. Boys’ hands don’t flutter like little birds, they said. They made me sit on my hands when I spoke. If I was standing, I had to clasp my hands behind my back. My hands stilled, my words failed. I grew quiet. Later when I had bigger, more important things to speak of, I remained quiet, kept everything locked inside.

I didn’t speak, but I listened. I learned to hear the words between the words, the words unspoken, written in silence.

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