Twink

Oh, I was like, I was like, is

Twink a ventriloquist? Yes.

Through his voice.

Through his bark.

Yeah.

Twink death.

I wonder if Oogway knew, like, uh...

Le- let's say like Tai Lung was a Dragon Warrior and he just saw like a fucking mirror scroll.

I would tell them of the people I love in Boston and Providence.

the people who would rather be called Butch than Twink, the people who would rather be called Queen and Diva and Miss Ma'am, but resort to he and him because they'd like to go home to their mothers and their howling dog, to continue sharing birthdays with their friends in ballrooms undercrowded and too small for our fervor, I would tell them of my chosen family that grew up queer and trans and non-binary but were never given the language to speak their ancestral tongue, how they were never taught the vernacular, couldn't find it on Duolingo, were never offered it as a high school language course.

I would tell them of the time my small gay came to us to say they preferred to be named neutral and iridescent in the same breath, how we all apologized for the times we insisted them twink when they demanded butch.

I would tell them of the liberation we found as adults in a trap house, how we finally became safe enough to speak our common dialects together, and that thank the intersex God, none of us succeeded in our attempts to leave this earth, plagued by the inability to understand ourselves when we spoke a language taught to us by those who would never dare learn ours.