Though perhaps not as loud as what we know today, queerness has always been alive in music, hopeful and radiant and revolutionary and gentle.

Can you be raped without being turned forever into something beyond yourself?

Now, I don’t know how to write about the spring without writing about the sickness. It’s a tricky and selfish thing.

I may come from country people, but I’m not country, I used to tell myself.

My Chemical Romance allowed us to exorcise the terror of being weirdos in the suburbs, forced us to rebuild the world in the image of ourselves.

Ode to Blonde

My freshman year dorm room was on the fourth floor, the highest point in the whole building, and in the evening it was impossible to see.

We all have our Sad Girl songs—the ones that hit right at the center of our biggest shames, our runny mascara nights, our whispers from the alleyway.

The summer of 2016 belongs to “Self Control,” white brick walls, the rumble of the MARTA train—to the warmth and the horror of being alone in a city.

To Be Still

Somewhere I was still eleven, still spinning in a world of rabbit hearts and howling wolves, where music ran right next to me in the grass.

The One That Loves You

I don’t want to leave the busy sun, all the people who see me and still love me, everything in my life that has ever made sound.