a letter to my friend

many aren’t today. there is nothing worse and nothing more to say besides that for even it is too much, too overwhelming, too true in a world that feels so false today.

i don’t know what you are feeling, and i don’t know if saying you should feel anything is a sign of possible tokenism and the like. i hope not. in the same way i do not wish to pigeonhole all muslims to apologize for the act of one, i don’t expect one of my best friends who identifies as queer to take the burden of all queer peoples.

but what i do expect is that me, a benefactor of dominance, an oppressor in friendly clothes, can try to make this less about me and more about you. that i can sit here, devastated, and wish that there weren’t an other and that there wasn’t some more marginalization. i can tell you i wish death wasn’t a great political tool, that the complexity of a single event shows ancient cross-stiching of hate that has never left, may never leave, and that only unwinds when we do – broken, collapsed, and apart.

on a day like today, i wish to be a part of you. to hold you and say i am sorry i am sorry. the world hurts always. it hurts everywhere. and i wish for a little while that at least the people on it wouldn’t and don’t.

we’d cry and drink and maybe listen to some good music and i’d remember there and then in a youth lagoon song or perhaps the excitement over the new jessy lanza album that this singing and listening and hearing each other as silence wakes the world, is what was wrong: there was little love, little hope, little time to just sit, watch, and see how happy people can be. how loved they are. and how loved they remain.

i do love you, and in a world that often tells you this is not enough, know that it is. in a world that often makes you feel away from this one, know that you are in it. and in a world that was born from competition and death, know that there is life in between.

it is small. it isn’t always stupendous. but it is just right if you find people like you, people who make a guy like me want to shake the stars and become light itself.

today, let the heaviness win. tomorrow, make the darkness afraid of the sun. burn, and let me warm my hands in your glow. you are the strongest world i have ever known.