The people I love are black. The people I love are Muslim and queer. The people I love can’t get people to use their proper pronouns. The people I love are all afraid, and because these are my people, I am afraid with them. I work, in times as urgent as these, to unlock the small pockets of joy that have kept us all surviving for so long. The small and silly things that aren’t death. I get on Twitter and make jokes about basketball, or I send a friend a video of a panda that we both remember laughing at once. I text the words “I love you” to people to whom I’ve owed phone calls. I spend a
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