I’ve been staying in Alabama with family for 5 months. I grew up here. I’m older now. I left and found myself (hrt + top surgery + lots of alone time) and then lost myself (funny how that happens), and life has brought me back to the one place I didn’t want to end up. (Sorry, Alabama. My relationship with you is complicated.)

But then I run into a queer kid in a coffee shop, and all I can think about is myself, 20 years ago. A teenager in a small town with only the faintest, unexamined feelings that wouldn’t rear their heads until my 20s and then some more in my 30s.

Maybe life has brought me here to heal that queer kid in me. That dirt queer whose favorite things were running through the woods in the rain, honeysuckles and blackberries in the sweaty summer, red clay under my cleats, swimming in the Coosa, living in the dirt.

This is for that kid.