To End Up Here With You

    Sometimes the forces we can’t control drive us off the course we thought we were on, leaving us to find our way through uncharted waters. I have always felt like a small thing caught up in vast movements, a paper boat in the floodwaters of a changing environment. What we bring with us and what we gather along the way become far more important than where we are going. I have learned to treasure the companionship of those who make the voyage with me, those who offer grief or grace along the way, who shape and shelter me and bind their lives to my own to ride out the storms.  In the face of the turbulence of the times and the uncertainty of living in a society poised on the knife-edge between universal liberty or rule by a religious minority that is actively seeking to erase or eradicate anyone like me, the simplest joys become profound: control over my own body, a home where I am safe, my beloved’s hand in mine.

"We were told Tiger is a travel star."