A Trashy Sideblog

This was going to be a response to one of tumblr’s perennial debates about the term “queer,” but it got too long to be a response, so here it is as its own post.

I’ve seen this debate go around many times now and it’s occurred to me that it might be useful to introduce the term homonormativity into this discussion.

The lipstick you wore Before the world ended… Well, I don’t remember it that well. Between Play-Guy battles, friends and school, There wasn’t time for makeup. I was eight.

I found it after. Not quite after the Rash broke out, Us being fine for quite some time. Your lipstick became a touchpoint Of normalcy. You used it sparingly. Like my Play-Guy batteries, A precious commodity.

They both ran out eventually. We raided, for food, necessities. It went well. By then we knew that stores made poor Troll hiding places. (My father Took apart the ATMs. Opportunity, He said, for future wealth.)

We’d found a bunch of lipsticks. I recall The colour names, some strange, exotic fruits, Star-Shimmer, Glossy Cherry, Red Temptation. Things like that. Red Temptation, I recall - After you, it was the last untouched one left. I was ten.

Red like the fairytale of the blood upon the snow. Red as yours, that evening at the well. Gone fetching water, leaving blood. No trace of you besides.

I could be writing your elegy in that red, A tribute to you and to the hue you never wore. It sits here now, a gold cylinder, on my desk. I am twelve, and old enough for lipstick now.

But I will let it sit. It’s still a touchpoint, and the last one left. A hope.