Content warning: Orlando.

So.  Here we are.

First, some links:

https://www.gofundme.com/PulseVictimsFund

https://www.gofundme.com/29bubytq

The Pulse shooting happened as we flew back into the US.  Being so far from media and friends, from the US context in that moment, seemed wrong.  Surreal.  We felt corners of the tragedy from push notifications on cell phone lock screens, from headlines glimpsed on airport CNN, from friends checked in safe on social media services we rarely use.  As the taxi drove us home, the TD Garden and the Bunker Hill Bridge were both lit up in rainbows.

I read and I read and I read.  I’m furious.  I’m sad.  I look for things to do.  Human action feels so weak—this tragedy, like the others, happens after so many have already given so much.  There is terror around its teeth.  We need Mater Misericordiae.  We need thousand-armed Guanyin.

We have ourselves.

To my friends who identify as LGBTQ+ in public or in their hearts, to those of you who aren’t my friends, to the people who will be hurt by the accident of holding some sliver of culture in common with a murderer: I’m sorry.  I see you.  I want to help, and I hesitate even to even write this, because it’s not for me to validate your struggles, your lives: they glow.  You bless yourselves.

Writing is a slow weapon.  It’s slower than bullets, than dollars.  It feels too slow.  Sometimes, it feels futile—a monk copying books by candlelight, by hand, in a Greek he can barely pronounce, while shadows crowd closer.

I want to help make this something that does not happen.

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