Before We Disappear

by Shaun David Hutchinson

It was a soul that seemed too big for its body, a soul so bright that it seared an afterimage into my vision that lingered for an hour. There was only one person in the audience to whom it could belong.

“Look, if God hadn’t meant for me to pick pockets, he wouldn’t have given me such nimble fingers.” “He could’ve intended for you to play the piano.” “I don’t think that pays quite as well.”

My brain forgot every word I knew, my tongue forgot how to speak them. I could do nothing but stare at him, stare into the depthless sky of his eyes.

It felt uniquely American, which was quite a feat seeing as we’d borrowed, annexed, or outright stolen every part of our culture from someone else.

“Because hatred is like a fire. It will spread within you, consuming everything indiscriminately. You’ve too much good here”—I tapped his chest—“to let that happen.”

hopelessness is a prison stronger than any Teddy could keep me in.”

I was kissing the sound of applause, the smell of a new fire on a frigid winter morning, the warmth of the summer sun. We became vines entwined about one another for a season, we were the sun and moon dancing in the same blue sky.

I think it must’ve been a person who’d wished for love but had never known it who’d created the first clock. Because time is a reminder of how quickly the present passes and how little of the future remains, and no one in love would want to know that.

He was a reminder that we’re all a few bad choices away from being someone else’s villain.

There was nowhere in the United States in 1909 where Jack and Wil or Ruth and Jessamy would have been able to openly have a relationship with one another. The only people who lived lives free of discrimination in 1909 were cisgender heterosexual white men, and none of my protagonists fit into that category. But I wanted to tell a story in 1909 that was full of queer joy, so I took a whole lot of liberties with regard to what marginalized people in 1909 would have been allowed to do, and I’m not sorry. We were there in 1909 whether people knew it or not, and while Jack and Wil’s story isn’t true, I’d like to think it could have been.