A queer keeps his fear in his tongue dubbed from society. His expression rots in his drafts of expired notes where he writes more queer poetry, to reach out for help, honesty and acceptance. A queer’s voice in this society is an echo where people juggle to understand what being queer is. He has to fight the roots of hetero-patriarchal society and question gender roles.
Queerness is not only about putting rainbow flags and kissing the same gender; queerness is human, a child we hide beneath our hearts till this world was ready to see a homo-romantic part that exists to breathe amidst the ”normalcy” this world looks at. I remember when I first learnt the meaning of this word through Google, where it still says “different” and it my heart aches to remember when I considered myself different, I learnt that being queer was different. I walked upon shame that reflected in the movies of mockery on the choices I was blooming in my heart as a child. I saw my parents laughing upon a man dressed as a woman, I saw my friends running away from the road where transgenders beg for money, I saw myself hating the word gay because I believed that’s not who I am or who I am supposed to be.
As children, we are stopped from expressing ourselves in every possible way. We teach them to feel inferior for their choices, we crush their voices of inborn normalcy which mulls up in the dirt of society. So tell me, how can a queer love his parents, love this society – where he was tortured every minute for breathing?
I slash a knife in my heart every time I hide away my nail paint, the kajal I stole from my sister, the jhumkas I bought from a nearby store where the seller thinks I have a girlfriend to gift them to, the rainbow flag I die to put out in my rainbow.
Being a queer is like being a ghost where you have to find places to hide and yet people get scared when they find you. There are spaces where I fill myself as the way I am. These spaces have to be protected from police brutality, these spaces are surrounded by the mud people throw at us. These spaces are where queer people meet to learn how miserable every day is to pretend in the eyes of people who gave birth to a queer. George Patton Jr once said, “If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.” Maybe he meant that about me, my queer peeps, the trans people, the gender nonconforming people who questioned the roots of gender, sexuality and the lenses of dominant hetero-patriarchy.
Alok Menon says, ”For the world people like us shouldn’t exist and everyday we try to prove them wrong. That no, we are breathing, we are alive” and that’s how I breathe in the soils that never questioned my existence, the soil where I was born human first.
So till when will I have to hear whispers of my sexuality in public places? Till when will queerness be limited to me, you – who are writing pages of acceptance?
Harshit, the queer who isn’t giving up.
Harshit Jalan is a 21-year-old Journalism student, who writes poems and articles on gender and queer representation. You can find Harshit on Instagram @harshitbreathingpoetry__
Featured image: Pixabay