Let me count the ways you’ve buried landmines along our path, lest I forget, or fall into the softness of unreality. You are both imagined and wholly tangible, you are both and neither.

writers when the lesbian is alive: WATCH OUR SHOW WE HAVE LESBIANS.

Don’t get me wrong, you can love. You can bend over a pinball machine for a biker, or a balcony for a photographer. You can bend over a bridge for a poet, but when you’re in a strange city at a lonely hotel bar and they ask what you’re drinking, say his name.

Black Jewish Superman? Then we know who needs to play him.

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AN IMMIGRANT WE KNOW AND LOVE, WHO’S UNAFRAID TO STEP IN.

I was taught of my own ugly, made to forget myself, and I do not love less.

When he came back, five months and thirteen days after he’d said goodbye, she did not weep when he stood in the doorframe. She did not thank him for showing up. She did not open her arms, did not open her heart. Her arms were crossed in front of her chest, her limbs and her ribcage protecting her heart from exploding out of her body and spilling all her secrets. “No,” she breathed, “that’s not how it works.” “You said you’d wait for me,” he reminded her sternly, edging closer, “you promised.” “And you think you can come back after months of not calling, of not caring? You think my promises mean anything if you can’t keep your own?” His face went blank, like the sky robbed of the stars, and she realised he didn’t know. He had no clue. His promises were like scabbed wounds, they faded with time and healed over, new skin growing to cover the original cut, until you forgot you had bled in the first place. But there was one promise that went deeper, one promise that had not faded and one she had not forgotten. A cut that would never heal. “You promised-,” she whispered, her voice dangerously low in her throat, “you promised you’d always love me. You said we were forever. Then you left. I didn’t break my promise. I waited. But eventually I realised two things: I was waiting in vain and more importantly: I didn’t want you to come back.” She was smiling now, a smile that spoke of pain and revenge and shattered hearts. “And I want to promise you one thing: if you ever fall down, you’ll be sorry I won’t be there to pick up the pieces.”