Before I knew of virtue, I 
knew of vice.
It’s not a stretch to say I 
grew up hand in hand with 
the knowledge of sin, from the 
fairly innocuous to the fairly 
extreme: to hurt someone is a 
sin, to blaspheme is a sin, alco-
hol, greed, sacrilege — the list 
goes on and on. But with the 
knowledge of sin came also an 
understanding of hierarchy, 
with some sins taught as per-
missible and others damning. 
All are sins against god, but 
some are excused, and others 
abhorred. Eating meat, sacri-
lege: it’s not exactly a problem. 
Even drinking, hurting others: 
it’s fine! Maybe a reprimand, 
maybe someone will be disap-
pointed. But no one will ever 
be hated for those vices. No 
parent will ever put down an 
ultimatum, detest their child 
forever or weep in sorrow for 
them. 
On the other hand, I was 

taught early on of a suppos-
edly unpardonable sin — being 
Queer. Yet as I became more 
cognizant of myself and the 
world, I began to revolt against 
this idea that I’d for so long 
been conditioned to revere 
as an axiom. And as a result, 
I’ve 
always 
unconditionally 
wanted to know, to ask god 
and attempt to understand 
the incomprehensible: If we 
can say that all love is intrin-
sic, why bestow it upon some-
body at all? Why bestow upon 
somebody what’s considered 
an unpardonable sin that is 
simultaneously 
irrevocable 
and undeniable? Why are some 
people given a simple and easy 
love, and others not? Are we 
not all deserving of loving and 
being loved in return? Am I not 
deserving? I guess what I want 
to know is: If to love and be 
loved is our destiny, then how 
can we be expected to want to 
escape it? 
It reminds me of these lines 
I once stumbled upon: “wheth-
er you love what you love / or 
live in divided ceaseless revolt 

against it / what you love is 
your fate.” These lines make 
me think of something else 
I was once told by a friend, 
years ago: “if I had to choose 
between blissful sin or loveless 
eternity, I’d choose the for-
mer.” Back then I’d heard this 
and struggled to understand 
why. What’s temporary bliss 
to eternity? I understand their 
words so much differently now 
that I no longer see love as a 
temporary bliss — love holds 
so much more weight to me. 
As such, I want to say that I, 
too, would choose the former. 
But every time I find myself 
ready to concede to my fate, a 
part of myself I can’t seem to 
let go of unwillingly hesitates. 
Like all others, I want noth-
ing more than to bask in the 
simple feeling of loving and 
being loved in return. Yet, 
simultaneously, I can’t help but 
yearn for the possibility of an 
eternity that outlives my mor-
tality. And unlike other sins, 
I’ve been told for so long that 
I can’t have both, can’t coexist 
between vice and virtue. This 
one is given a clear ultimatum, 
which is: choose. One, or the 
other — virtue and eternity, or 
vice and love.
And what if I choose the 
latter? If what I yearn for is 
eternity, why is it that I must 
forever be trapped in a strug-
gle against the very nature that 
god himself bestowed upon 
me? 
Yet if I choose the former, a 
love that is my fate, it’s prac-
tically the same as giving me 
the knife to place upon my 
throat. I guess what I’m really 
trying to get at is: Part of me 
revolts against this dichotomy 
because, despite it all, I truly 
believe I am deserving of both. 
And who’s to say I’m not? I 
want to be good. I want to live 
forever. I want to love. Maybe 
it’s enough that I think I can.

Sweat seeps through my 
tank top, reaches the back 
of my dress shirt and crawls 
down the nape of my neck. It 
doesn’t slow me down. My feet 
continue to stomp the devil. 
The heat is something fero-
cious, but so is this music. 
Women in ankle-length skirts 
and ornate hats sway to the 
sound of men’s palms on tam-
bourines. Saints run across 
the church, hollering in a lan-
guage only God can under-
stand. There is no AC. I know 
they hot, but hell is hotter. So, 
we all dance. 
My parents sowed the fear 
of God into me early. I was 
raised to shun sinful things 
– which makes becoming a 
sinful thing rather compli-
cated. On Sunday, the pastor 
preached to his congregation 
that homosexuals will burn. 
Maybe that’s why I dance so 
hard and ignore the sweat: 
I’m practicing for everlasting 
burning. 
Sunlit stained glass win-
dows illuminate my dysfunc-
tional family. A weathered 
Bible tells stories of my father 
and his son. The soprano choir 
girls are my sisters. The dea-
cons with deep voices and 
even deeper pockets are my 
brothers. The woman smiling 
next to me every Sunday is my 
mother. 
My mother is in rare form in 
these four walls. She talks to 
other churchgoers for hours, 
even when the pastor himself 
has already gone home. She 
wears her best outfits – spar-
kly long gowns – that I don’t 
think we can afford. She wor-
ships like nobody’s business. 
Lucifer halts when he hears 
her coming, for she slays 
demon-made dragons with a 
single prayer. A Black momma 
with something to fight for 
is more vicious than a black 

mamba, fangs and all. Her 
high heels and high-pitched 
“hallelujahs” shield us from 
the underworld. 
When I was 15, I told her I 
was flammable, and she has 
been trying to save me from 
hellfire ever since. I don’t 
think she realizes nothing 
burns hotter than her rejec-
tion. In her mind, religion is a 
bulletproof vest. Each prayer 
is a protection. In my eyes, 
her Bible is the bullet. Each 
sermon is salt in the wound. 
I don’t want a warrior for a 
mother. The only protection 
I need is her embrace. I want 
her to believe in me like a 
higher power. Accept me like 
I am a Bible verse. God has 
enough hymns; sing to me 
instead. 
Being closeted in a church 
means hiding love from a 
group that claims to worship 
a loving God. It means your 
“family” picking and choosing 
which parts of you are divine 

enough to hang on to, and 
which are demonic enough to 
be hung. The holy spirit won’t 
stop haunting me. 
That’s why “sinful” love is 
so special to me. I am not just 
choosing to love someone. I 
am choosing their heartbeat 
over heaven. I am choosing 
their full-body smile over 
my family. I am choosing the 
erratic butterflies in my stom-
ach over eternal life. I don’t 
need to worship a man in the 
sky. There are men on earth 
who’ve learned how to make 
music with my heartstrings. I 
will love them instead.
Sweat seeps through my 
tank top, reaches the back of 
my dress shirt, and crawls 
down the nape of my neck. It 
doesn’t slow me down. I con-
tinue to sway with his head on 
my chest. I barely even notice 
the 
entire 
room 
burning 
around us. The heat is some-
thing ferocious, but so is our 
music.

Michigan in Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

May all things dissolve in 
an ocean of bliss

ANONYMOUS
MiC Contributor

Anonymous Contributor/MiC

Wednesday, April 5, 2023 — 9

A conversation in precedents

Summer of 2019: the 50th anni-
versary of the Stonewall Uprising 
in Union Square Park. The parade 
started in Madison Square, swam 
past us, went down to the Stone-
wall monument in Greenwich and 
then flowed back up through 7th 
Ave to the AIDS Memorial Park. 
I don’t remember much, only that 
the pride flag cost $5 while the 
Bi flag was $7; I don’t get why 
it’s more money for less colors, 
someone had said to me. Nor do 
I remember the floats or the pro-
cessions, because I didn’t see any. 
We were too early — there were 
only narrow streets filled with 
people in rainbow corporate wear 
waiting for a cue.
That summer I was green: 
fresh-off-the-boat kind of green, 
kissed-a-girl-and-I-liked-it kind 
of green, green like summertime 
ginkgo, like wet lawns and ten-
der daffodils. Green as I was, just 
being there — sitting in the park 
and licking the vanilla ice cream 
that melted onto my fingers — 
filled me with self-importance. 
Back then, I would’ve preferred 
the word “confirmation,” but it 
didn’t really matter. Self-impor-
tance comes from confirmation, 
confirmation in the image of odd-
ly-priced flags, rainbow prints 
and whoever, whatever else came 
before me. 
Exhibits that summer: The 
MET had “Camp: Notes on Fash-
ion” and the Brooklyn Museum 
“Nobody Promised You Tomor-
row: Art 50 Years After Stone-

wall.” The color pink became a 
confirmation. So did Oscar Wil-
de’s portrait (his actual portrait; 
not to be confused with that of 
Dorian Gray) and Bjork’s swan 
dress. Then we went to Brooklyn. 
After walking past paintings of 
mangled bodies, Judy Chicago’s 
porcelain dinner plates felt warm 
to the touch. Echoing in the halls, 
the tables and the plates, someone 
sang: We have always been on fire 
/ We have always been let down / 
We have always been an island. 
Confirmation 
comes 
from 
precedent: and as I walked out 
with too much pocket money to 

spend, I bought something for 
myself from the museum store — 
a Queer of Color poetry anthol-
ogy, with big names like Audre 
Lorde and James Baldwin and 
Ocean Vuong. I don’t remember 
reading it because I didn’t think 
I understood poetry. But I still 
kept the book on my bed stand, 
because the list of names that line 
the back cover proved that I have 
lineage. 
Though I do remember one: 
Richard Blanco’s “Killing Mark.” 
I had read it in the gift store, with 
the final line echoing in my head 
as I made the decision to buy the 

book. I die each time I kill you. 
And no writing on difference or 
exclusion or discrimination rec-
ognized me as clearly as a line 
about loving too much. 
So: I modeled a poem after 
Blanco’s in high school. He wrote 
about a man he loved, and I wrote 
about a woman I missed. But I 
ended up scrapping it, because 
he said it better and in words that 
weren’t my own. 
Some words that aren’t my own: 
Judith Butler thinks that gender 
is built from citations, and Mag-
gie Nelson cites Butler in “The 
Argonauts.” Nelson also cites 

Michel Foucault, Elizabeth Weed 
and Anne Carson. Anne Carson 
cites Sappho in the most literal 
form — by translation — in her 
2002 collection, “If Not, Winter.” 
Shakespeare came up with 1,700 
words that we still use today, and 
Gunnhild yehaug writes (400 
years later) about how words are 
only words because we use them, 
and we only use them because 
they create meaning. When we 
stop finding those things mean-
ingful, the words become obso-
lete. 
In my journal: I recorded a line 
from a Fredrik Backman novel. 

That’s the power of literature … it 
can act like a love letter between 
people who can only explain their 
feelings by pointing at other peo-
ple’s. Below, I wrote how none of 
my feelings are original; I learned 
courage from “Water Margin,” 
jealousy from “Dream of the Red 
Chamber” and pride from my 
father’s emails to myself. Maybe 
these emotions existed earlier, but 
they were only realized within me 
when someone wrote it down, and 
when I read those words. Maybe 
all of our feelings are secondary 
and borrowed, I wrote, though I 
borrowed that idea from another 
book I read a couple months ago. 
To keep borrowing: I am con-
structed from words. Words that 
aren’t my own — I only know that 
I am a writer because a professor 
called me one; I only know that I 
can like girls because another girl 
bravely declared, in the attic of a 
sleepover long ago, that she was 
in love with the female character 
in a video game. To cite Nelson, I 
think of citation as a form of fami-
ly-making. I come from a long line 
of people who have recognized 
themselves in others, and that 
fills me with warm, warm self-
importance. 
Last in a long line: Now it is 
winter, many years later. Some 
things are still new to me, though 
I am not as green as I was that 
summer. Once in a while, I come 
across another line in a book that 
I jot down, pen on paper, and what 
was alien is alien no more. With 
ink, I eat myself full. It is winter 
but snow is thawing. The soft, wet 
soil underneath sprouts young 
tulip stalks, tender and green.

JAMES SCARBOROUGH
MiC Columnist

Hopeless romantic

AUDREY TANG
MiC Columnist

Queer in Color

To recognize and embrace 
oneself in a world bent upon 
one’s erasure is a radical and 
liberative act — an act that 
everyone in the MiC com-
munity bravely engages with 
every day. The experience is 
heightened for Queer minori-
ties, who are buffeted by hate 
from their own communities, 
the white majority, and the 
white Queer community. Black 
Queer people are pushed out of 
spaces that they have created 

— ballroom and cunt become 
appropriated by ravenous 
white mouths that try their 
hardest to imitate syllables 
that do not belong to them. In 
this storm, they must find sol-
ace in their own communities 
and histories. In this America, 
which profits off and encour-
ages violence against their 
bodies, they must somehow 
create community and learn to 
love. “We are … queer bodies 
moving around in spaces that 

look less like a home and more 
like desperate lodgings, trying 
to make our beds with other 
people’s garbage,” Joshua 
Whitehead writes.
Queer people of Color un-
derstand that this country was 
built against them and works 
to grind them to the bones of 
their existence, that rainbow-
colored corporate logos are 
pushing kin out of their homes 
and that countries that prom-
ise to give them rights are 

flimsy covers for apartheid. In 
America, they speak and write 
in the language of colonial-
ism, trying desperately to mold 
the garbage of English letters 
into spaces that can convey 
an inkling of their true selves. 
They are forced to turn words 
that subjugated entire civiliza-
tions into blankets and roofs. 
“Queerness has a type of archi-
tecture,” Aisha Sabatini Sloan 
writes in her essay, “Borealis,” 
and this is the architecture of 

Queerness of Color: redlining, 
pain, liberation, colonization, 
violence and love.
In the 2023 edition of Queer 
in Color, LGBTQ+ MiC staff 
and contributors have crafted 
architecture from the letters 
that once erased them. Seven 
new pieces, ranging from lyrics 
to articles, celebrate Queerness 
in all its forms, inconsistencies 
and beauty.
We are incredibly proud of 
the brave work these writers 

of Color have created in order 
to share their stories with 
the world. During Ramadan, 
Michigan in Color is excited 
to celebrate a type of love that 
embodies the sacrificial, reve-
latory and liberatory spirit of 
this holy month.
With great reverence, we 
present the 2023 edition of 
Queer in Color.
Sincerely,
Safura Syed
MiC Managing Editor

Design by Abby Schreck 

Audrey Tang/MiC

