#joy young

Her hair: her own queer Bat Signal in the sky announcing her lesbian arrival.

And now I'm staring at your silhouette,

Though she has been here as long as I remember, she finally felt super, stripped of her invisibility.

You too, are a master of illusion. That your words create these columns we must belong to. That your tongue throws up man and woman so I might forget I’m even here.

This week was my birthday and I watched fear rise in queer youth as legislation protecting them in school bathrooms was destroyed. This week was my birthday and I watched fear and rallying and scrambling as more legislation and policy was formed to deport people who have built lives and families here. This week was my birthday and I watched Dakota Pipeline protesters set their structures aflame as they were forced to leave. This week the world felt like it was spinning differently, like unsteady, like despair, like a top before it stops, like NO ONE should be "waiting to see" what happens anymore. This week my birthday came and went while the world burned with fear and rage and hate and love and passion and sadness. This week, my people and I celebrate my birthday anyway. This week my people and I celebrate my birthday because of these things, because the world seems to want us to burn, to be eradicated, to disappear...and we haven't.

I didn’t grow up in the snow so when I found myself with a flurry falling about my face I was entranced, surprised by the way skin burns as the temperature nears negative degrees fahrenheit. Shocked to learn it can stay a winter wonderland for months until the spring comes. My friend tells me when the snow melts they find everything that’s been lost to it: hats, gloves, an inordinate amount of bus passes, keys, jackets, water bottles, thermoses I didn’t grow up in the snow But I know the way we lose things when we feel frozen.   How sometimes the things that seem to fall most gently burn us. How cold a hand we expect to be gentle to us might be. Now that they are gone, I am finally thawing like springtime, like living, like finding pieces of myself I’d lost to that season. Like I no longer have to shovel my way out just to get through the day. Like winter is finally over.