‘Love Beyond the Code’ Contest Winners
Winner:
“Some scholars theorize the ‘fruit’ of knowledge was Eve’s love for Adam.” A fun fact, courtesy of my Marriage and Family class.
I think the fruit was a peach.
A late night in her kitchen, vulnerable. Still. My eyes, tear-filled and bleary, “…I’m not sure I should tell my mom.”
She inhales deeply. Then her hands, hesitant yet steady, press a plate of sliced peaches into my grateful palms. “They’re good.”
Permeating warmth. Her eyes never waver. This is the nakedness of knowing, my head on her shoulder, the timbre of her breath, soft and deep. Terror as the façade of Eden stripped itself away, swallowed up in radiance as my eyes opened like Eve’s in the garden. The sweetness of peach on my tongue, her hands in mine. What a joy it is, weathering the evils of the world, knowing the goodness of the love of a woman.
Runner-up #1:
I can’t imagine a God that could look down on the two of us and not be in awe of the way I look at you.
Late at night, with your arms around me for the hundredth time, I can’t help but think about God. I imagine that someday, when I die and stand before God to be judged I will be asked what I did with my time here on earth, and I will stand proudly before my Creator and think of the way that you look in the light of the early morning and say, “The only thing You ever told me to do. I loved fiercely, even when I was told that my love was an ungodly thing.”
And God will smile down on me and say, “Oh my child, love is the most godly thing there is.”
Runner-up #2:
A Secret
I fall in love
with people
who
braid my hair
draw faces on frosty glass
bend down to look at ants
crawling
“I love my friends
Too”
But
Have you ever picked up your heart
dripping
and stuffed it in your backpack
bloody
Quick!
Before she notices
Runner-up #3:
The first thing I noticed was his smile,
Enough to heal two years worth of shadowy dates pushed into murky waters
To evade malevolent eyes.
That day next to a sunny Starbucks window turned into my pillar of light,
One that ushered carving pumpkins and picnic dates,
Cuddling during movie nights with handpicked friends,
Changing the subject with others.
Road trips and movie theaters when the lights went out,
And the storm clouds gathered.
Hushed voices treading on eggshells through narrow halls.
Knocks on our doors from inquisitive bishops craving confessions of contrition
Our inquisition had begun.
The writing on the wall dripped in veiled threats cloaked in verse and principle.
So we escaped, thieves in the night with degrees in hand,
Far from musket fire and regressionist indignation.
Now, we worry about catching the subway and paying rent.
It isn’t perfect, but it gets better.
I love you, Andrew.
Honorable Mention #1:
Racing across the airport to catch a last-minute rebooked flight to see you tonight, I can almost hear the universe asking, Are you sure about this?
Going to BYU, I thought I’d never be tempted to date girls, but then I fell for you in our senior writing class. We didn’t go out until six days before you left for grad school. But ours is a kind of love that sends us 600 miles to see each other, gets me out of bed in the middle of the night to slow-dance, runs into the crashing waves with me and kisses me on the beach, makes me understand love songs.
Maybe that’s why I can be cheap or indecisive in any way but splurging on this flight, why I’m sprinting across the airport to be with you.
An instant leap. Because I know.
So yes, universe.
I’m sure about this.
Honorable Mention #2:
I used to worry about getting into heaven. I knew that the way I wanted to live wouldn’t allow me in.
I was caught between the truth I had been told and the truth that was entirely my own.
One day, I decided to wonder what I would be giving up in the next life.
I pictured what heaven would look like.
I am on the front lawn. It’s a perfect late summer evening. Leaves are illuminated above me, and the air is sweet. The girl I love and I, in all our unholy love, are laughing about nothing in particular. Friends and family are bustling around in the kitchen with food they prepared. There is enough to go around and then some for the neighbors in case they want any.
This heaven is here, and it is now.
I don’t worry about getting into heaven anymore.
Honorable Mention #3:
When it finally comes,
It’s a passing “by the way.”
A simple, “Oh, you loved her.”
It’s three years too late.
Of course it is.
I did everything not to notice;
pretending to ignore it,
dating other people,
watching her grow colder.
“No, we’re just friends.”
I’m a bad liar.
Friends don’t share the bed.
They don’t sneak kisses,
huddled together under blankets.
How can I move on from a relationship that didn’t happen?
Every song is about her.
Every poem is dedicated to her.
It’s still all her.
I’m still all hers.
If I were a boy, could I have held you?
Would you have loved me
the way I wanted you to?
Could we have stopped pretending,
just for a moment?
In another space and time,
we meet at the U instead.
Your family isn’t Mormon.
And we aren’t just friends.
How could we ever be just friends?
Honorable Mention #4:
A Sapphic First Date to the Springville Art Museum
I don’t remember the art we saw. But I remember your smile—the way it reached the edges of your eyes, the conspiratorial way you looked at me as you whispered handsome in my ear. Do you know I’d never heard that before?
I don’t remember the lunch we ate. But I remember the gentle press of your shoulder against mine, when your fingers grazed my hand—just for a second. I remember you confessed you’d liked me for months. How could I have been so blind?
I remember sharing earbuds but not the songs you chose. I remember how beautiful you looked, but not the clothes you wore. I remember the mission stories you told me and your generous laughter at my terrible jokes. And I remember that final question I asked—one I so naïvely thought we might circumvent:
“Do you want a temple marriage?”
And I remember your answer.
Honorable Mention #5:
I'm thinking about a girl in my 9 am Eternal Families class.
I just kissed a girl for the very first time less than twelve hours ago, and now I'm sitting in Eternal Families.
The professor is talking about our future families. He's telling us about how we can prepare for marriage in the temple, and I can't stop feeling her lips brush past mine.
Snapping back and taking notes on a family that will never be mine is jarring. Studying the trajectory of a relationship that doesn't look like mine feels strange. Being told that my love is expressly inferior to the eternal, sacred love of my straight classmates becomes commonplace.
But when I hold her hand or tuck her hair behind her ear or watch her eyes crinkle when she laughs, something about it feels eternal to me.
Honorable Mention #6:
"My love, I love her in silence"
I love her undercover of darkness.
We have no covers
because we live in shared rooms.
We have nowhere
to Be.
But like weeds growing through
cracks in concrete, we find a way
to be,
to grow, to reproduce.
The church controls sex, love.
Man-and-woman.
Marriage.
But what do you do when you are a genderfucky-polyamorous-sort-of-man-transmasc-nonbinary-not-woman in love with a trans woman?
My love knows no bounds, and I give it freely.
Sex is human-nature
and human is nature,
nature is God,
we are God,
and together
we are sex.
Despite the fear, the surveillance, I live as though I am free.
I cry to her in the park.
That we have nowhere to be
human. We, T4T trans, are
unhuman to the world.
But maybe we are
more-than-human plants, we are weeds.
We grow where we’re not supposed to.
They rip us out, but
we grow
again
and
again.