I would spend many hours trying to diagnose the emptiness Amanda left in her wake. I had lost something, but didn’t know what. Surely there’s a queer space on the page for stories that lack a middle?

Is it too obvious to say that reading books about queer women with superpowers can be very… empowering?

Perhaps my identity oscillates at times but in a world that attempts to force me to choose one side of a binary, I remain firmly in the middle.

Saying yes almost destroyed me, but I was still afraid to say no.

I keep looking for labels. When I first read about nonbinary identities, I think of my family, and whether there might exist a word in Polish that means the same thing.

When I do hear Springsteen’s “4th of July, Asbury Park,” I won’t long for something I never had because I was born too late. I’ll let the song wash over me gently, wistful for all the people I knew who made the best of bad luck down the shore.

“We were talking about all the places we wanted to visit, all the people we wanted to be. When she asked to kiss me, I said yes.”

I don’t think anyone looks at the introverted, disabled woman, and thinks she’s powerful. But my family chose to. They are the reason that I can pushback against the stereotypes society holds for a quiet blind woman, and assert my place in this world. They taught me to swim in the waves.

The story of queerness in Uganda, bound as it has been to fictions about who we are and who we ought to be, is a story of resilience, love and community.

Everything looks better when you’re in love, and Nevada City was no exception.

I could be anything, my mother taught me. I could be anyone I wanted. Except for being an atheist lesbian — that wasn’t really on the menu.

A teen dyke wanders around the country in the early 2000’s, armed with an Ameripass and a journal.

On refusal, rest, and resistance.

I am a first generation Iranian-Canadian queer on their first trip to Iran at the age of twenty-seven, forming connections to the land.

I spent my adolescence trying to be a boy. I wasn’t very good at it, but I tried really, really hard. I didn’t wear bright colors, I didn’t listen to pop music, I didn’t even style my hair until I was 17. I certainly wasn’t the kind of person to dress in drag. And yet I was. And yet I did. Because when I was 16 I won a drag show in Florence.

Most of my old hiking companions from Los Angeles are queer. Now I have Goldie, who takes breaks while we walk, just to jump up and kiss me. She places her paws just over my heart.

The mountains and forests of Northwest Montana were where I felt the freest as a lesbian, but I didn’t know that feeling had queer roots going back 100 years, to when my doppelgänger was wandering these woods.

Considering the discomfort my friends and loved ones experience when we travel together, or when I share what I think are unremarkable experiences of microaggressions or discrimination, has helped me understand the degree to which I’ve normalized things that are not normal.

I didn’t expect us to create a Blood Moon Healing Circle Ceremony. It wasn’t on the emailed itinerary. Why did we even feel the need to create it? Two words: intergenerational trauma.

In the span of a few hours, in two different Indian airports I experienced a spectrum of responses to my gay trans self that would serve as a microcosm of not only my trip, but of my entire queer experience. There are no guarantees, so I’m learning to be my own safe space.