queer as in refusing the given shape of things
queer as in staying up until 2:17 a.m. reorganizing your bookshelf by emotional impact instead of author or genre. the heartbreak books together. the poetry that saved my life together. the books that feel like weather. the ones that changed your nervous system permanently. the ones you are still circling, not ready to touch again.
queer as in making a whole evening out of getting dressed with nowhere urgent to go. trying on six versions of yourself. layering rings just to hear them click when you reach for a glass. standing in the doorway deciding which self gets to walk outside tonight.
queer as in texting someone “did you eat” and meaning i am thinking about the continued existence of your body.
queer as in keeping a note in your phone called “moments that rearranged me.”
a stranger paying for your coffee when you forgot your card in the other coat pocket. the smell of rain we were drenched in on the island and how it filled the streets and we laughed at the wonder of something so sudden. the first time someone said your name like it belonged to you. the way her love was like the ocean.queer as in relationships designed from conversation instead of inheritance.
defining closeness together. deciding what devotion looks like in practice. inventing forms of partnership that fit the actual people inside them. structures shaped by particulars, by honesty, by the ongoing willingness to ask what we are becoming now.queer as in keeping the movie paused because someone started telling a story and the story became more important than the plot.
queer as in deliberate softness, and impossible to contain fabulousness.
queer as in learning someone’s micro expressions the way others memorize directions.
the exact face they make when overwhelmed but pretending not to be. the almost invisible shift when relief arrives.queer as in teaching each other how to keep living when the world made that feel unlikely. how to walk into a room that was never built for you. how to leave one that harms you. how to make a third place entirely.
queer as in time that begins when you arrive and ends when you leave, regardless of the clock. dinner at midnight. breakfast at 4 p.m. celebration whenever the feeling peaks.
queer as in giving gifts that make no practical sense but feel cosmically accurate.
a rock that looks like the shape of their hands. a spoon that resembles their handwriting. a book that feels like something they forgot they once knew.queer as in making things because the feeling will not leave you alone until it has a body. cutting paper at midnight. rearranging the room three times in one afternoon. writing one sentence over and over until it lands with weight.
queer as in loving people in constellations instead of hierarchies. no single center holding everything in orbit. attention moving where it is alive. care distributed, tended, renewed through presence rather than rank.
queer as in magic that looks like pattern recognition. seeing the same symbol three times in one day and changing direction because of it. keeping objects that seem charged. trusting coincidence when it hums.
queer as in building a life that would confuse your former self. different rhythms. different priorities. different definitions of enough.
queer as in joy that feels slightly theatrical when no one is watching. singing while stirring soup. dancing while brushing teeth. bowing dramatically after completing minor tasks.
queer as in learning how someone rests their full weight when they finally trust the ground will hold them.
queer as in keeping a running list of beautiful strangers you will never speak to. red boots on the subway. the person reading poetry while waiting for takeout. the elderly woman dragging her dog dressed in Burberry through the store.
queer as in cooking for someone while they sit on the counter narrating memories you were not present for. stirring the sauce while learning who they were at sixteen. tasting the past in the present tense.
queer as in loving yourself through deliberate authorship. choosing your name. choosing your shape. choosing how you enter a room and how you are witnessed there. building selfhood the way an artist builds a body of work, piece by piece, revision by revision, until it feels inhabited from the inside.
queer as in learning someone’s favorite silence. the quiet that settles after laughter. the quiet that arrives during shared concentration. the quiet that means stay.
queer as in making tiny altars without calling them altars. objects arranged on a windowsill that somehow hold a whole season of your life inside them.
queer as in staying curious about the people you already know well. asking new questions. noticing new details. allowing surprise to continue living inside familiarity.
queer as in inventing elaborate backstories for strangers with someone you love.
the woman with three tote bags is secretly transporting rare orchids. the quiet man on the train writes letters he never sends. the downstairs neighbor with the dachshund is clearly an undercover operative.queer as in falling in love with someone’s particular constellation of gestures before you even understand what category the world would place them in. the recognition that arrives first in the body, long before language tries to organize it.
queer as in survival that becomes culture. coded language. chosen names. shared history carried person to person. knowledge passed quietly, carefully, until it becomes lineage.
queer as in desire that moves by recognition rather than rule. chemistry sparked by voice, by presence, by the way someone inhabits space. attraction unfolding through curiosity, through attention, through the slow bright surprise of wanting to be near a specific aliveness.
queer as in building a life that cannot be summarized in a holiday card. relationships that shift shape over years. homes assembled through chosen proximity. belonging formed through recognition instead of obligation.
queer as in refusing scarcity as the organizing principle of love. affection growing through expression. attention expanding through use. closeness multiplying rather than dividing.
what does it mean to say i am queer? a way of moving through the world that treats aliveness as something to be both shaped and received. a way of loving that expands the available forms of love. a way of making meaning from attention, from gesture, from arrangement, from choice. queer as in living so specifically that the ordinary begins to glow. queer as in building lives that could not have been predicted from the outside. queer as in the quiet, ongoing insistence that we are still here. still making. still finding one another. still inventing ways to live that fit the size and strangeness of our actual hearts.
All I can say is that I hope you never stop writing. The way your writing inhabits itself as a film, a garden, the relational beauty of living, the small moments that become a one act play, the way it makes me as the reader, feel gladness for your beloved humanness.
yes