Issue 8
In the following pages is the gift of your knowledge – an intimate knowledge of what it is like to live in your skins. We get to feel, briefly, the desert sun beating down on our faces, the heat that both drenches and suffocates, as we run with you from the bus stop to your door step. We get to feel the burn of your father’s ambition – the way it courses through you – to make a better life for his children, and also the awkward burn of breaking through
the silences passed down through generations. We get to struggle alongside you as the rough waters of a global pandemic and an unrelenting tide of adult expectations threaten to engulf you.
The frustration is ours as we navigate the endless questions about queerness from well-meaning parents and desperate peers when your school won’t pick up the slack. And we’re crestfallen with you when there’s no birthday cake, slowly awakening to the realization that there was only money enough for a gift or a cake, but not both.
