We are not your pity project.
We are not your footnotes or feel-good hashtags.
We are the fire.
Lit by loss.
Fed by fury.
Kept burning by a love
too raw to be explained
and too holy to be tamed.

We are the fire.

And let me be clear:
We built this heat together.
Queer hands. Black hands. Brown hands. Scarred hands.
Hands that were told to beg.
Hands that were told to behave.
But we clenched them into fists,
then opened them wide enough
to catch each other
when the world dropped us.

Do not talk to me about love
if you have never loved someone
through a panic attack,
a court date,
a relapse,
a name change,
a funeral
nobody showed up for but us.

Do not preach belonging
if your version of community
requires me to bleed quiet.

Because our love?
Our love is not quiet.
It is a goddamn siren.

It is the howl at midnight
when your friend goes missing
and you organize the search
before the cops even pick up the phone.

It is the bail fund.
The shelter share.
The ride across state lines
because someone’s safety ain’t safe no more.

This is the love
built out of fire escapes and Plan B pills.
Out of rent split five ways
and pronouns that finally feel like home.
Out of soup pots that never run out
and couches that become sanctuaries.

We are the fire.

And if we go down,
we go down wrapped in each other’s names.
Your grief is my altar.
Your joy is my revolution.
Your tears are not your own here.
We cry loud.
We cry together.
We cry and then we get back up
and burn down everything
that told us
we should have never made it this far.

Because we are not surviving by accident.

We are alive because we love
like arsonists.
Like nobody ever taught us
to fear the flame.
Like we were born with gasoline in our mouths
and prayers made of matchsticks.

We say:
You do not get to decide who belongs.
We already do.

You do not get to define “worthy.”
We already have.

You do not get to shame us into silence.
We already swallowed that fire
and spit it back in poems.

You want to know what real love looks like?

Real love is mutual aid at 3 a.m.
Real love is teaching your brother to bind
because his ribs are begging to breathe.
Real love is telling your sister
her scars are not secrets
but spells
she survived to cast.

Real love is not soft.
It is sacred.
It is subversive.
It is sewn into us
like a second skin.

Do not ask us to make it palatable.
Do not ask us to smile
when our people are still vanishing.

We built this love under siege.
And still,
it sings.

Still,
we dance in the firelight
of one another’s survival.

Still,
we pour ourselves into each other
like rain into thirsty ground.

Still,
we say your name
when no one else will.

Still,
we answer the phone on the second ring
because that might be the night you needed saving.

Still,
we make room.

Still,
we bring the heat.

Still,
we burn.

We are the fire.

Not because it is cute.
Not because it is easy.
But because no one else ever stayed
when we caught flame—
and we learned to stay
for each other.