By Sterling Tull
When my friend came to me asking, “Hey Sterling, could you possibly edit this?” I happily accepted. At the moment he’s writing movie for us to shoot later this year in the spring and I’m his first hand man for correcting his mistakes and going through first draft corrections. Being a nice friend, I diligently edited the entire 67 pages of the script in high detail, making notes along the way of things he could possibly change and his atrocious incorrect use of then and than. The movie that we’ll later be filming is called Fuchsia Skies, and while I read the script, all I could wonder was, why is it called Fuchsia skies? Somewhere in the middle, one of the lead characters explains her love of poetry and shares a poem that she wrote, aka Fuchsia Skies, to a loved one.
The themes of love and acceptance are presented throughout the story of the two young characters in the script. The pair had a sort of brother and sister love for each other, which got me thinking. My mind always refers back to the fact that I am homosexual, that I’m Mormon. I then thought about my own sister and I’s relationship, and how I knew it would just crush me if she didn’t accept me when I came out, thus giving me the idea of this poem. In it I wanted to express the themes of love and acceptance like my friend proposed in his script, but through the power of sibling love. You could say that this poem also demonstrates one of my biggest fears, that things won’t always go right. I wanted to stay true with some of the feelings presented in it through the simplicity of the word structure. I hate sugarcoating things because that’s not how the real world goes, so without further ado, this is my poem, There Was.
There Was
There was a girl.
Like many other girls, she had blond hair and blue eyes.
Like many other girls, she had siblings, a brother and a sister that she’d cared for dearly.
Like many other girls, she had family.
Like many other girls, she went to school and worked harder than she was supposed to.
Like many other girls, she went to church and participated in the sermons.
Like many other girls, she liked to read and bike, climb, jump, laugh.
Like many other girls, she had hobbies.
Like many other girls, she had some of the best friends a life could offer.
Like many other girls, people cared about her.
Like many other girls, she was a teenager.
But like many other girls, she was just a little bit different.
Like many other girls, she was a lesbian.
Like many other girls, she suffered the hate.
There was a boy.
Like many other boys he had wavy locks of brown hair and green eyes.
Like many other boys he had a sister.
Like many other boys he liked to bully.
Like many other boys he thought he knew what was true and right.
Like many other boys he disagreed.
Like many other boys he went to a funeral.
Like many other boys his grades dropped.
Like many other boys he developed a problem.
Like many other boys his parents liked to drink.
Like many other boys he’d regret every stupid decision.
Like many other boys he left his home.
Like many other boys he spent his money on something useless.
Like many other boys he died without hope.
Like many siblings, brother and sister meet again.
Like many people do, they meet in an unneeded circumstance.
Like many do, they cried in each other’s arms.
Like many do, they forgave.
Like family do, they walk hand in hand, brother and sister once again at last.
Hello, my name is Sterling Tull. I’m a gay fifteen year old boy living in the wonderfully uneventful state of Idaho with my wonderful mother, Christy Cottle, and wonderful stepfather, Davin Cottle.
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