Queer means “denoting or relating to a sexual or gender identity
that does not correspond to established ideas of sexuality and gender.”
The first time I read this definition was while writing this poem and yet I am it.
The first time I read this definition I registered some irony in the fact that queer even has a definition.
To me, it is ambiguity. A label I leave to people for interpretation
Because their perception of the word will still not mould me. I have finally learnt to be free.
My sexuality may be fluid but it isn’t water, taking shape of whatever container you try to put me in.
I dread being asked what does queer mean.
Queer means that your growing up was magical.
Because you literally magicked a rainbow unicorn out of mid air
As you crafted your super-gay identity out of societal and media invisibility.
Queer means you partly brought yourself up.
The internet was your mother who taught you everything and society was the father who abandoned you
Not letting you know where you came from and who you were. You were always searching
Queer meant that some words in your vocabulary were always missing
Like ripped pages in a dictionary. Like a conspiracy theory
That the heterosexual world was in on a plan to not even let me know I was different for the first 18 years of my life.
Queer means you were are a finder. Always looking. Always searching.
Searching for an identity in the words and experiences of strangers on Internet.
Searching for people like me.
I am a database.
Every queer person I meet is a new harbinger of wisdom and
I desperately learn them. Archiving their history at the back of my mind.
Queer means your future is never in sight
And the present feels perpetually information deprived.
Queer means I crack terrible jokes.
I correct my posture by saying “Stand straight. Be gay”
Because I guess I get to have a laugh at the expense of something that hurts me.
Because queer hurts.
It hurts like an open wound. It is that side of me that asks for too much.
I sometimes wake up and wonder what normalcy feels like
But that word “normal” jars against me and I realize
I only wonder what privilege feels like.
Because queer means I have never been spoon fed morals and values
I had to fight enough to find and validate my own
I had extricate my self-worth from the carcasses of my confusion
Find myself in a sea of invisibility
But not reveal myself for the sake of safety
Sometimes people say “It is all the same love” but I beg to differ
Don’t try to simplify this struggle. Trust me, I have tried.
Queer tires. It is feeling like you have been running before you have even begun the race.
And you have. It’s just that some parts of this struggle are seen less.
And when you read a research article use the term “minority stress”
You close the door of the room and you cry.
Because somewhere some great goddamned researcher named the ocean of grief I hold within me.
Queer is an ocean of grief but I grew up becoming a capable enough swimmer to navigate it.
Queer taught me the real meaning of resilience. To keep swimming with no shore in sight.
To get hope from the stars at night when you realize your identity is a part of a larger history
That there are so many who live like this alongside me and shine their light anyway.
We are never alone but sometimes we just need space to call this grief own own.
Recognize that it takes time to emerge from the black to show your colors at Pride
It takes more than just silent acceptance from the world to not let our hope die
So we try.
We fight to live and live for the fight.
Just let us write our ode to our queer grief sometimes.
The Weird Kid Who Is Not A Kid 