I’ve been thinking about how words shape me, or maybe how I shape them, like I’m kneading dough with the gentlest hands I can manage. There’s this need to be soft with myself when I write, to let my queerness and Blackness just be in the room, breathing alongside me. It’s not a performance. It’s more like letting my shoulders drop while I type—less armor, more exhale.
The other day, I was scribbling in a notebook, not aiming for anything big. I wrote the phrase, “my laughter is a soft place to land.” It wasn’t planned. It just slipped out, and I sat there staring at it, like, oh, that’s how I feel about myself today? My body felt it before my brain tried to make sense of it. Sometimes a line comes out that feels more honest than I meant to be, and I have to sit with it, let it breathe before I decide if it’s staying.
What surprises me is how writing—when I let it be gentle—shows me parts of myself I didn’t realize I was carrying. Maybe that’s the queerest part of my process, this permission to be tender in a world that expects me to be hard-edged. Drafts get messy, handwriting goes sideways, and sometimes I laugh at how dramatic my scribbles look. But there’s a softness in not judging the mess, in letting it be enough for now.
I guess I’m learning to trust that the words will hold me, even when I don’t quite know what shape I’m taking. Some days, that’s the best part—letting myself arrive on the page, a little softer, a little more real.