When Did My Skin Start To Burn? (Stray #1)

Former Title: Fault Beneath the Stars

Stray Boys Series #1 | 🍉

They told me I wasn't in the Book.

That in the grand design of the Divine, there was no ink wasted on people like me.

It is hard to live as a gay man in a society that is blind, or worse, a society that chooses blindness in the name of faith. They preach love while teaching us to hate ourselves. Because of them, your skin burns even while you are still far from hell. To be gay is to be mocked, bruised, prayed over like a disease, and treated as something less than human.

They hurt us for one simple reason: we are not written in their "Holy Book" the way they are. We were never named. Never claimed. Not even spared a footnote. And perhaps that is why it is so easy for them to erase us.

I grew up in a house heavy with rosaries and sacred texts, a home that echoed with novenas every Thursday morning. I learned early how to kneel, how to bow my head, and -- most of all -- how to hide. I buried my truth so deep that even I forgot what it sounded like to speak it aloud.

It is hard to be gay.

Harder when you fall in love with someone just like you.

"That's wrong."

"That's a sin."

"You're going to hell."

They say it like a prayer.

But can they really blame me?

Because in that so-called "sin," I finally found myself. In that love they condemn, I learned how to breathe without fear. With him, my wings grew where shame once lived. With him, my skin finally stopped burning.

Book Cover By: Souriah Arts