you dhould be your own person. you are so young and insecure. at this rate you will never be able to find the cup or the scepter

I learned a very long time ago that I could post in English on the Anglo internet about my experience as a sexual minority in the #middleeastandnorthafrica region. I could vent about every slight or slur, every indiscretion, all the doors that might not have closed in my face had I not been who I am. But that all it would do is earn me a seat at a table half the world away, a seat that I would lose the second I said “but my people are still human. But we are Arab women before we are queer women. But we are muslim before we are trans women. But we are imperialised subjects of the periphery before we are bisexuals. But we are ‘combat-aged males’ before we are gay men and boys.” A seat that I could only keep if I show a willingness to betray my people. And I will not. I do not want it. The price is too steep and the value too low.

If all time hap- pens at the same time, then every day is eulogy. Suffering is a cycle of bird and bud and sun. Of meds and ash and want. You put on your shoes. Walk. There’s a sea- son just over the hill. Beneath a summer sun, a magpie warbles. Tears evaporate. The blossom is spilt.

Maybe your queer elders fictional or otherwise were also influenced by the biases and contradictions of their own circumstances, time, and place and I am no more beholden to their ideas and ways of doing things than I am to any other form of tradition trying to constrain me.