On lesbian feminist architecture and tea kettles.

In my home, there is a room where Weyes Blood is always playing and there’s a star projector—yes, like the ones for kids—and there is a flow of people I care about who come in and sit next to me to watch them move. I come home for the day and it is dark and someone is dancing and we hold hands and spin around until we fall to the ground and become stuck, completely still and looking at the stars again.

In my home, there is a room filled with files and all of them are sorted by music artist, and then by album. It is a written musical library where the papers are encouraged to be wrinkled, stained with tears, and full of underlines and annotations from nights of intense discourse with friends over “What if in garden song all of the yous are about her?” and “Does she need to refill her love before she sees the audience or see the audience to refill her love?”

We have a corner where you can sit and tuck yourself into your knees next to a half filled kettle, and someone will always find you when you are ready and ask if you want a cup of tea.

In the night, there is a room where the rugs go so far they create a horizon and people sit with you to watch television together. There will always be “just one more episode, come on.” Sometimes, you don’t want to watch what’s on someone’s half-dead laptop; nonetheless, you come a little closer if only to leech off some of the warmness that cones from having people you care about exist so close to you. 

In the day, there are lawns where it’s always sunny and warm and the grass is green. The picnic blanket and speaker are always out and sometimes you are the one talking people’s ear off and other times you are silent on someone’s lap.

Sometimes, we leave because when else in your life will it be so easy to go to the weekday karaoke nights at the gay bar and bet on how many times someone will play Valerie and promise that next time, yes next time, you’ll get tired of it for sure.

If you come back and find yourself at a campus party. It exists between moving lights and colors and drinks until you inevitably find yourself at a bench that is the perfect distance between home and the party where you will huddle against each other with the light of someone’s cigarette near you and talk and talk until it is too cold to live in that soft moment any longer and it is time to go home. But at home there are no goodbyes or see you tomorrows in the elevator and we all hold hands and the bed is so big that it would be impractical not to have a big sleepover. Somehow there are enough old big t-shirts in the drawer for everyone. If it were earlier, someone would still be sitting in one of them and your hands would be stained red or blue or pink from hair dye. Tonight, there is no hair dye under your nails to complain about but you will make sure to fix that as soon as possible.

Our fridge is so full that it would be a waste not to cook together, not to push our arms against each other and have people argue about what is next on the queue. The table always looks warmer than the to-go containers in the drawer on the bottom left so we sit and chat until the food is long gone and our throats hurt.

The alone in our home sticks to the room with pens and paper, where you write so much you begin to feel as if the other person must know how much you are loving, as a verb instead of noun, them right now. The shadows in the room take shape around you and pull you as if they are trying to bring you closer to the paper.

The alone is never forever, never for longer than it needs to be, never uncomfortable. You can always leave when you are ready, and there we all are again, existing together.

Commune via Tal Bloom