YOU SHOULD KNOW BY NOW
HOW DEAR YOU ARE TO ME
On January 26th, 2025, I will turn 30 years old.
After every trip I take, unpacking my suitcase is more than likely an emotional experience.
Whether I’m shaking out the wrinkles from the t-shirts and pants I wore, or I’m neatly putting away my favorite souvenirs, I am almost always in awe of the experience I had and how time away can shape me differently as a person.
For the last creative project of my twenties, I wanted to write a zine of poetry in honor of the people and places who have offered a home to me in their own ways. Truthfully, it’s easier for me to compose poems about circumstances or subjects in my life that bring me pain. I intended to create from a different muse—paying tribute to those who mean a great deal to me.
In the last year alone, I traveled frequently for work and pleasure across North America. My stops included Mexico City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and my hometown of Zanesville, OH.
While traveling, I’d write poems based on the memories I took back to New York with me.
The love I’ve received from my friends is the love I always wanted to give to myself.
With an alarming rise of prejudice and fascism across the United States, these poems soon realized themselves into more than a passion project for me.
As an openly gay man, I wanted this zine to firmly stand my ground in how I express my queer identity in everyday life. And how my loved ones and I celebrate each other for what we share and how we are different. Values I was raised with by my parents in Appalachia Ohio.
My intention for those who read this piece of work is to harness their freedom and voice to create in the face of judgment and division. Love is more powerful as a verb than it is as a noun.
All I can hope for at the start of my thirties is the continued right to be myself and the journey that continues from becoming him.