I need art now in a way that I’ve been able to suppress for a while. I can’t any longer.

Art is what taught me how other people worked. It’s my lifeblood. I don’t know how to be a person without it.

It’s hard to explain, but roll with me a minute. Books taught me what life could be like. Books gave me hope for a future that wasn’t living under my family’s thumb.

Books taught me how to come out. Books taught me how to show love in ways other people understood.

Art showed me what the world outside could be like. It showed me who I could be.

Film showed me what forbidden emotions could be like, what love could be like.

A huge chunk of how I learned how to make other people see me comes from that archive. I need to contribute to that archive, to participate in it, always.

It’s why I’m always writing, even when I should be resting. It’s why my Twitter is as much poetry as it is policy

I was a choir kid. I was a dance kid. I was a color guard kid.

I miss all of it. I miss my body becoming art, even just for a few moments.

It’s part of why I became obsessed with the Rollettes as soon as I got my first power chair, why I begged a Bollywood fitness teacher to learn how to handle wheelchair dance for me.

I want to feel like I’m part of art, again. I want to be with my community.