[ WP ] Around your head is a noose , you are about to be lynched . Explain the events that led up to this moment .

The voice drones on in my head, bouncing in between the condemnations of the crowd and the prayers for salvation from the minister. The only one who is quiet is the executioner, ready to pull away the ground beneath my feet. I would rather I was surrounded by men like him. These people, they don ’ t know what they ’ re saying, but they say it anyways. Maybe I would just be another part of that crowd if I had taken a different path, but I never could have denied who I was. The hate in their eyes, it's unbelievable. Why does it matter so much to them what I am? Why does it matter so much what happens in another ’ s life? 
 
 One word strikes out at me from the prayers. Grace. What grace do these people know, when they would execute a man for following his heart? What grace do these people know, when they would snuff out a life because there was an attempt at living it? They told me that I lived in sin, but I won ’ t ever believe that. I can ’ t believe that. If there is anything that I can take solace in now, it ’ s the fact that they never caught him. 
 
 I see my neighbour in the crowd. I know his wife, and I know how he treats her. Yet that is that sanctity of marriage that these people would kill to defend? I have lived beside that man for more years than I haven ’ t. Does he not understand my worth, for having known my character? Has every judgement he ever made about me been consumed by the one label? That I am a sinner? 
 
 My only sin is that I lived and loved. I can pray now that God will take me into his arms, but they are not the arms I long to be in. The man I would call mine is a man I will never see again. For ever having seen him, seeing him in a way that all these people say was a crime against nature, I will hang. Is that what they wanted, when they first found out? I would accept disagreement. I would accept detachment. But why do they seek to snuff me out, when I have done them no harm? It hardly seems fair. But then, what is? 
 
 I see the one that turned me in, standing apart from the rest. Not physically, no space for that with all those who have turned up to watch my end. He is silent, unlike all the others. He won ’ t meet my gaze, and I can see that unlike all these others, he knows what he has done. He isn ’ t just a bystander. That man disagreed with the way I lived, with the way I was forced to live by my heart, and in that he made a decision that brought me here now. 
 
 The prayers have stopped. All I can do now is close my eyes and think. My happiest memories are those that have condemned me now, but I will have them in this life and the next. Is the God I know the God they apologize to for my sake? He has never done me wrong before. 
 
 I know soon I will have to ask him why I died in his name.
