to all the nonbinary and gender non-conforming people out there: i am sorry that the world continues to define us by our absence. as if all we are is a refusal, a protest, a rejection. there is nothing lacking about you, there is nothing insufficient about you. even when so many of us have tried so hard for so long to escape gender we always have to be defined in relation to it, like a shard of glass stuck in a foot. as if escaping from gender norms is a form of negativity, and not a form of possibility. thank you for the new (and old) worlds and possibilities you are creating with your survival. thank you for your creation, for your imagination, for your continual rebirthing. i hope that one day the world will acknowledge our contributions and not just our departures.

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