Henry Morgenthau III

And at the same time we celebrate Gay Pride, seeing more people taking pride and ownership in their sexual preferences and gender identity, we know that there are still a lot of people, especially older people, for whom making that identity public or even admitting it to themselves isn't so easy.

In Henry Morgenthau III's poem, The Half-Open Door, we hear the narrator wrestling with that.

While listening to the moaning of a ghostly choir of lost lovers, I try to tell you the truth, half hoping you don't hear me, as I desperately try to expel something stuck in my soul I can't bear to live with, but don't want to die with.

With a furtive sideways glance, I peer through a half-open door to behold a body gnarled like an old cherry tree.

As though in a pas de deux, he moves as I move.

Is he my partner, or my mirror image? When the mirror shatters, the truth will out, with half-truth seen through a door half-open.

The Half-Open Door, Henry Morgenthau III, from his book, A Sunday in Purgatory.

For a lot of people, it's hard to think of gay pride without remembering the AIDS epidemic.