BakiBakiBaki (they/them) and Papa Bear (he/him), Minneapolis to Mississippi to The Milkyway

To be Black, Native, and Queer is to embody the phrase, “loving throughout the cosmos”. To remember we are made from star dust and shall return. Queer love does not expire when we are slain. When we are murdered the love we gave grows to become as omnipresent as star shine be, as our stories are. From light years I’ve traveled to be born free and free our love shall be. I see myself as coupled still. The words “passing” and “transitioning” have spiritual depth not dependent on heteronormative understandings nor meanings. Crossing over and having a lover become an ancestor in their 20s is a part of being queer that can not solely exist in the realm of grief. We deserved celebration. Our love is abundant and joyful still…Not despite of distance and erasure nor because of it, like all and any love; our stories deserve context as our constellations combine, converse, and change.

Merit, Minneapolis, MN, USA -- he/him

Contentment is easy when you don't know what else there is. When I learned about the Internet at age 12, I thought the only website available was Wikipedia. I spent many pleasurable hours clicking from blue link to blue link, totally unaware that there was any other way to learn or explore using the Internet. I carried on this way for many years. One of the blue links I landed on, repeatedly, and with urgency, was the Wikipedia page for Eddie Izzard. I remember at the time, the language used to describe her was "transvestite". I was fascinated by this, and rankled. Rankled because this word "transvestite" felt important and huge. I didn't like it. It was easy to be content because I didn't know what else there was, and suddenly, I knew what else there was. Transvestite. It sparkled and smelled and burned. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I visited Eddie Izzard's page daily for years, and grieved when the term "transvestite" became too problematic to publish, and disappeared from the page. It took me many years to discover my own transvestitism , and the only reason I did is because of those early blue links cracking my contentment in half, and asking me for more.