Dear Baby Queer zine

To my babyqueer freaky dumpling self, Language will be your love and enemy. Identities will float around you like shit in a bucket like that one time your ma bathed you in a plastic red bucket in the basement but left you in there so long that you couldn’t hold it in anymore and shat and then sat in the water, terrified of your own shit as it encircled you.

You will find love in Chicago. It takes about four years. You find your people. You learn what love can be. Amongst true friends. Free of the manipulation that so often exists in monogomous romantic relationships.

You’ll cry and shake and tremble and try to explain yourself to a lot of fuckfaces before you figure out that you don’t have to define or explain yourself to anyone.

You will be twenty five and still won’t feel totally comfortable using or owning any descriptors to define yourself. You’ll mutter biracial, bisexual, hapa, asian american, when you have to but ultimately feel like nothing quite fits. Sometimes you’ll use queer serpent and that feels right at times.

Hard femme feels right for now.

You know you’re a freak and you know you’re a fucking powerful freak and you have your beautiful powerful freak people who love and understand you deeply. You thrive in ambiguities, carving out the space between.

With love, MALADY CHANGES