Teach the Torches to Burn

by Caleb Roehrig

Out here, there is no Romeo Montague—there is only a boy and a vault of wild air filled with expanding color and flickering, dying stars.

Benvolio talks about girls the way I try to talk to him about sunlight—how magical it is, how undefinable, how exquisitely beautiful in all its permutations; at any given time, he is pursuing multiple paramours, and each one is uniquely alluring, uniquely irresistible. But I have never felt that way about any girl. Why have I never felt that way?

Verona is shrinking, my days to govern my own life running swiftly out, and every door available to me merely opens onto four more walls.

Sometimes it feels like the most important parts of me are the ones I can’t share with the people who are the most important to me.

“When someone has decided who you are, and they won’t let you change their mind, what are you meant to do? Where is left to go?”

“I guess that’s the thing about masks … you wear one long enough, you eventually forget it isn’t your real face.”

I am homesick for a stranger, for that fleeting moment when his hand touched mine and I realized he was doing it on purpose.

When you are secretly carrying gold, everyone looks like a thief.

My face burns as I ask the question, because I am aware on some level that what I’m seeking is not answers but intimacy.

What I really want is something I don’t know how to ask for.

Looking into Valentine’s eyes and recognizing myself in them was … apocalyptic, in the original sense of the word: a revelation.

No one has ever told me I might deserve to be happy on my own terms, rather than just happy with what I’ve been given. No one has ever told me I might simply deserve to be happy.

Valentine and I have only just renewed our acquaintance, but I am gutted at the thought of him leaving again. The future I truly desire, even more than being an artist like Giotto, is a nightly feast of this. Of lying close with someone who makes me feel reckless, of hands and legs intertwined, of warm lips and hot breath and fingers in my hair.

What Ben takes for granted, I have scarcely had time to appreciate, and already we speak of the day I will be without it again.

Two days ago, I could not think of one thing to look forward to, and now I am dreaming in weeks and months and years.”

But my fate was always somewhere in the distance; so long as it was out of sight, I could pretend it was always far enough away not to pose an immediate threat. Now, though, I realize that destiny itself is an ambush.

No matter how far I go, and no matter how fast I get there, I will still have to return. My doom will still be lying in wait.

“Fates can change in the blink of an eye.”

Is it my lot to bring trouble to everyone I know?

“If Valentine must face death as a consequence of saving my life, then surely I can face it to repay the favor.”

“It’s funny, isn’t it? That dowry is all I’m worth—the only money that will follow me wherever I go—and yet none of it is mine. It will only ever belong to my future husband, and I am but the useless chest in which it travels.”

Have you never considered that perhaps you are meant to have this happiness?

“Perhaps I deserve worse.” “And perhaps you have punished yourself enough already,”

“Why does Valentine call your name whenever he rouses from his stupor?”

Romeo … when did the two of you become so close that yours is the name that always hovers closest to his lips when he wakes?”

“Is he … is he happy when he’s with you, Romeo? Are you happy together?” “I…” The room blurs, and it takes a moment for me to speak. “Yes. And I have never counted myself so lucky.”

“I think I have always been a bit in love with you, Romeo. But I was too afraid to say it before. A person can only lose so many good things before he begins to expect all good things to be taken from him, sooner or later.”

“We do not always get to choose the future—sometimes the future simply happens, and we may only choose how we will live with it.

“I do not know why exactly, but I feel mostly … excitement. Perhaps it is just that, for the first time, I am deciding the life I wish to live. I am choosing where I go next, and why—and with whom—instead of simply being told.”

“I am excited about more days spent loving you, Romeo. More days spent being honest about who I am, about living for myself, and not fearing an empty future.”

“That is beautiful,” I murmur, more aware than ever how lucky I am to know someone as good as Valentine, to be loved by him. “It will be my h...

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I have no idea what the future will bring, because I’ve not decided it yet. Instead, I choose to float in this happiness, and to imagine all the possibilities that lie ahead—for they are as boundless as the sea.

A story about queer people snatching happiness from the jaws of a world that has been fashioned against them. A tale as old as time. As the shadows deepen, and old ugliness awakes to shake its loathsome head against the peace we’ve fought long and hard for, remember this: We cannot be corrected or contained. We are as boundless as the sea, and we will teach the torches to burn bright.