🌸 🌸 🌸

As a cutie piece of crap (qtpoc), I’ve chosen my family time and again, not just as an act of reclaiming but to reclaim the act itself. Consider it a mission to decouple its transracial implications for myself. I’ve been medium successful. I learned I can immediately see in someone’s eyes whether or not we’re passing the DuVernay test. Even if it isn’t explicitly said, the proximity to whiteness clearly colors the timbre of their words (as it does mine) or reveals socialized submissiveness (as I feel too). And sometimes, I know we won’t pass because slipping into a mask of weak multiculturalism can be a soft landing if I’m feeling brainwashed enough that day.

🌸 choosing 🌸

The reality of the queer agenda can be, on the one hand, a contrived performance of trying to blend and bond over things that really are not the same---despite the alphabet soup declaring it so. It can be a true struggle of finding your own voice separate from the ones that resonate most. And on the other hand, it can be an extravagant whimsy that flows through us all easily and equally. It becomes how we learn to share in the belief that queer decadence is the true antidote for the poison we all feel---of lost time, lost love, lost lives---no matter what part of the gay carousel we’re relegated to. It’s what gives me the confidence to take the hand of a complete stranger and find interlocked in their fingers kith and kin. It is truth and then it is truth again, exchanging palms until it becomes a part of your own fight and joy. And it is this joy that has been generous to me.

🌸 my 🌸

In the waters of the Bay I’ve found teachers, fiber artists, nurses, true stewards of the land. I’ve matched my pace with runners, with musicians, chefs, and skaters. I’ve set rings with silver smiths, steamed buns with bakers, I watched the Everything Bagel strut the stage in houses of drag. I’ve collected mussels with crabbers, done tai chi with taiko drummers, danced with med students, danced with the girls, danced with the gays, danced with the theys. I’ve watched puppy play in kennels on Folsom; I’ve exchanged blunts with yoga instructors in Dolores. I’ve eaten bundled burritos bundled like a burrito at Baker, walked the city stem to stern thrice, run through ice plants with huskies. I’ve witnessed break ups and reckonings, affirmations of gender, of spirit, of self. I’ve sunned on the roof, shivered on the beach, and felt peace under eucalyptus. I learned to parallel park on hills steeper than the price of gas, and have had the breath taken from my chest at OB. In the waters of the Bay, I’ve chosen family, as it comes, in all its forms.

🌸 family 🌸

proof of my first chosen family

🌸 🌸 🌸