the night i got mountain-high

and fell asleep in a swath of rose-colored blankets,

i dreamt about your back.

“Hello everyone! If you don’t know who I am, my name is Charlie and I’m the happy couple’s unwanted child,” I boasted at the start of my wedding speech.

Media today would have us believe there is only one queer narrative to tell, often missing the communal part of the queer experience. Friendship – the delicious, validating euphoria of finding your people and lifting them up through shared experience and joy.

In a moment, prehistory, we were made in mutuality out of soil and sky

A cosmic creation, us, distilled into monday night drinks and patches of

Is this love? I don't know. I want to hold you tight and keep you warm when you cry, I want to dry your tears and hold your hands in mine.

Now is the winter of our discontent. The Santa Ana winds blow dull days through our sprawling gray city, and the occasional blip of sunshine only serves to strengthen our collective yearning for a spring still so far out of reach.

I drink mint tea and chew sunflower seeds

On the Sunday afternoons we do not frolic.

At the petco near where my cousin lived,

Before she slept the big sleep,

there was a bird.

If I had nine lives, I still wouldn't be able to write this letter in the way I want to. You mean a lot to me, and I can't express it fully through words.

september came like a baby,

like a wail of a train as it disappears

behind a mountain.

We met on the path in the trees,

next to the sunset floating on the lake,

immediately recognizing each other’s

magic– like fairies do.

THIS IS ANOTHER POEM ABOUT AN ORANGE

it’s a bigger poem, about a smaller orange.

When we were kids and Haley would come to spend the night at my house, she would always show up with this big, quilted duffle bag. She used it for everything: family vacations and cheer competitions and sleepaway camp.

We met in a graveyard in 2017.

That’s not quite right. We cemented our budding friendship while running a 5k in a graveyard.

Edmund White can be considered one of the godfathers of the queer literary mafia. Present at the Stonewall Inn when the legendary riots began in 1969, his epic career began with the novel Forgetting Elena (1973) as well as co-authoring the original Joy of Gay Sex (1977).

Fell in love and into your lap;

you lay at my knee,

July warmth picking at my nose.

If you ask me, “Do you want to go to Miss Saigon?” I will say yes. Every time. I respond, “Who’s driving? Me or you?”

Today I cannot help but feel very small and timid and afraid. I am afraid that I am failing at something I can't even name. I’m afraid that I am made up only of flaws. I am terrified that my love, at its core, can only hurt.

The thing about loving you

Is that it's always,

And it doesn't have a name

It comes from a time

when the universe was nameless;