...

Baby,

It's been 3 years in cisnormative time. (you taught me about that yesterday.) Lifetimes if we count all that we've been through and back.

How many flights have we missed together? (at least 2.) How many places have we broken into & explored? How many iterations of myself have fallen, time and time again, in love with you?

Right now, the empire is crumbling, and it's taking as many souls as it can with it. Capitalist thieves keep trying to bury and burn shared histories. It is not fair.

Let me say this again:
It is not fair.

Violence against trans men looks like being criminalized and iced out of every space you enter. Violence against trans men looks like other men of color coming up to you and talking about your “bitch” in front of my face. Violence against trans men means only being appreciated when you are being sexualized.

Violence against trans men is not seeing yourself -- alive, happy, and human -- anywhere.

We weren't meant to love in the open. Every day is a gamble. Why are these shadows so heavy? Why can’t anyone else see them? Will today finally be better than the last?

And yet, I wake up everyday knowing I’ll get to talk to you. I know I am selfish and I am stubborn. You give me so much time. May I share some back with you?

Trans divinity lights up your body like stars lining the sky. Trans ancestry sparks at your synapses and smells like the incense you burn. Trans abundance spills from your throat as you shout “no” just so others can be treated better. Trans safety pours from your hands into everything you touch.

(you teach me so much.)

Queerness never began, and will not end, with white supremacy. It does not begin and will not end with us, and that’s okay.

Sitting at my family’s glass dinner table, I would cry. My aunt used to tell me,
“Our family may not be rich in money, but we are rich in love.”

Baby,

We may not be rich in money,
But we are rich in love.