And yet, Allister makes me happier than anyone ever has. He texted me the other day to ask if I was good, since I’d avoided him at lunch. And I never responded. I want him to get his answer.

“Will I make it here if I’m gay?” I ask—it comes out before I can stop it.

Everything I say has felt less reviewed lately, less rehearsed. I’m getting comfortable saying what I feel. And now, that relaxed thought-word relationship is about to fuck my whole life up, because I just told a godly ancestral being that I’m a homosexual.

Probably should have thought that one through first. It’s the first time I’ve acknowledged it out loud, and it feels like a dirty word.

I see my father’s fist closing in on my face, again and again—an aggressive, unstoppable demolition ball. The mist around my arms shapes into the conjuring of a new man in front of me—a familiar wraith of blue and black.

Don’t you ever bring something like this up in my house again! he screams. FAGGOT!

My head smacks the mantel of my memory as he hits me in the eye. I feel it burst all over again, the way it did then, and my windpipe crushes in his grip, against the wall in our living room.

I drop to my knees, wrapping my hands around the angry wrist.

Help me, I pray to no one in particular, the same way I did in those moments he beat me.

That time, I got no answer. This time, a voice responds.

“Let go of it,” it says.

A hot wind peels my father’s hands away.

I hold my hands out, palms facing the ground. My fingernails swim in a starry glitter. It’s like the fist buried itself in my nails. The spirits absorbed into a manicure.

A river of purple light tears across the blackness up above. Streamers of pink gas stretch like ribbons across the sky. Purple spinners, waterfalls of vibrant green, stars exploding in shades of light blue and white. A whole new galaxy of color.

Grandpa is smiling. Light shines like diamond carats from his mouth. And then he starts laughing. Laughing and laughing, bending his neck back laughing, slapping his knee.

I realize he’s not laughing with me, because I’m not laughing. He’s laughing at me.

“If you think that changes sum’n about all this, then you STUPID, boy! It’s been Black folks like you, Jake, since it’s been Black folks—you know you sound like a fool. Because when you gone, it’s gon’ be a whole lot more just like you to be born. And they will know who you were and know that it’s okay to live, because you lived before them.”