Every week I google “em dash” and then I copy and paste the symbol onto the otherwise empty page.
I have memorized the shortcuts for the acute accent, the grave, the circumflex; I am unfazed by the requirements of the cedilla and the tilde. Be you umlaut or diaeresis, I am ready. I am many years and a graveyard of dead websites past needing to look up routine HTML or markdown.
But not so, the em dash. Every week I must pause to find it. A break in the flow, appropriately.
(In truth it’s rarely the break; it’s the beginning.)
what do you do when your world is suddenly more open
are you coming to NYC anytime soon
what the hell is happening in Texas
Sometimes I collect questions (as a prelude to excavating answers).
Is it time spent on thoughtful reflection on possibility, or is it just avoiding the truth?
Level of splendiferous in your outfit: 200.
Types of invisible pain stemming from adolescent disasters in classrooms, locker rooms, & quite often Toyota Camrys: at least 10,000.
You are not a jigglypuff, not yet a wigglytuff.
Reporters & fathers call your generation “the worst.”
Which really means “queer kids who could go online & learn that queer doesn’t have to mean disaster.”
Or dead.
Instead, queer means, splendiferously, you.
—from Summer by Chen Chen
In honour of Pride Month, and on behalf of all the folks from the places I am from who cannot, I am donating half of June’s proceeds from the paid editions of the newsletter to the Trevor Project and the other half to the Transgender Law Center.
Thank you to the folks who support this newsletter with your $, and thank you to the folks who support through reading.