ten piedad

Kentucky Love

is what I am consumed by. It is where my parents found their home, where my grandparents tied the knot, and where I secured my first boyfriend at 14. People from all over the world have gathered here, some moved across nations to bask in the backroads. It pulls me in not long after every inevitable drift. It is where I have made love in a tent and in a home and in a car and in a field and in a dorm and in a dream and in a vision and in a version of it all I have children and my own land and I’ve gotten married a few times over.

In the current version, I’ve yet to have children. I have not married. These were the two signifiers of love that were familiar to me growing up.

I have learned how to love here in a variety of ways. From high school PK shootout sweethearts to plentiful holler based polyamory, it has all been magnetized by the bluegrass soil. My lovers have always come to me in Kentucky, my lovers always come in Kentucky, all my love is in Kentucky, please come.

Kentucky is

where queerness is best sowed into the holy trinity:

beans,

corn,

and squash;

it is the sister crop to eternal joy and every season is prettiest in its center, I assure you. It is November now and the trees have exploded in color and with them, all of my feelings at once. This is the time of year when flirty friends begin hosting friday morning cinnamon roll + hash brown breakfasts. It’s the season we start sharing each others’ sweaters, forgetting them in one another’s car after long walks or grocery runs.

This is when dancing becomes vital to your health. When the steam of a DJ booth is the only sustenance needed to make it through the night that began it’s descent into darkness that afternoon. Poemful dinners and open mic pot lucks. Things that would’ve been overexposed in the summertime. Slowly, we honor the art of river city seduction.

This is my first attempt at collecting each lesson I have waded through and been confronted by within love. More than anything, it feels like a gift I am long over due in delivering to sweet

who has been there along with me for just about every gate hop, field sprint, creek graze, + moon glazed hike I've taken thus far.

I bring this to a public platform to be able to share what feels kind. It is the plain contrast to despair that has often saved me. The time I found myself in my most devastating union, I simultaneously fostered rich adoration and kinship with pets and neighbors. The mere inhalation of their minty fresh camaraderie was the only sensation that helped float me through grief, through loss, through delusion, through grit. This gunk required grace in a new flavor. Perfectly fluffed. And Kentucky delivered.

I do not know how to properly assert one’s energy in the year 2023. Currently, I try to serve delicately sweetened coffee to the Louisville regulars and swirl amongst the community that continues to shapeshift through the city.

*in my spare time I will continue contributing to this conveyance system of queer thought to further the gay agenda

This is the first initial opening of the vault, of all the ideas I’ve been sitting on, stewing over, and simmering down. A collection of art, regardless of completion. Art is action. Accessible art is a tool.

When humanitarian hellscapes engulf cities like Gaza, when land of the human spirit is bombed and besieged, the counter response must include the release of anything and everything that contains beauty. The beauty you see is the beauty you are is the beauty of your art.

cease fire

free palestine free congo free sudan free haiti

release

This is all I’ve got. This is all I’ve stored for winter. I’m gonna continue surfacing all of my most generous memories. I'm gonna carry on slinging cortados through Kentucky for the coming months. Resting it all here.

I hope we collaborate, I hope we regulate, I hope we share any ounce of wonder that arrives to us + through us.

I am so glad we’re here.

Kentucky