Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedBecause people will always disappoint anyway, we watch Beyoncé take the stage to talk about havinga uterus in Texas—no yellow rose here, baby—just herpink one and Kamala in her sharp blue pantsuit trotting up as well. And for a moment, this fear we’re all feeling—deep in that rosy, tender place, inflamed as an ingrown hair—stops burning. And your friend sitting beside youon the kitchen floor, where everyone dropped drinks and masks to cluster before the tiny TV, tells you how she and her husband became pregnant, only to realize, after seven months, the life inside her was no longerliving. She can’t imagine being one of the many other women who carried an almost fully realized humanwithout a heartbeat to term and needed to tear across red state lines before bleeding out in the passenger’s seat.And yet, we’re supposed to be partying in our costumesand pretending we’re someone else and it’s all business as usual, but the idea that there are crazies praying for zygotes outside clinics and a girl somewhere dyingin a landlocked car, and a woman sitting beside me who could’ve, and didn’t carry a dead child to term—can you blame us for being angry and seeking peace? The thing about the unborn is you can’t blame them for being human, as the guy in prison, sleeves of tattoos and a teardrop, or the woman with track-marked arms. It’s easier to reduce people to clichés and stick themin black-and-white boxes, or “all lives matter” the lives that aren’t yours to touch. It’s comforting to create empathy for cell-clusters that never were, because they didn’tlet you down because people, no matter how looming or beautiful, even Beyoncé and the woman who will hopefully be our leader, will fail us just as much as all the peoplewe’ve loved and continue to. That’s being an adult: standingup in the face of flaws and uncertainty. Refusing our hopeand bodies to wrench away. Willing to fall in love again. And so, we watch Bey wave her yellow-banner-words as if to say, keep your mitts away from my body. Holding it close to ours, praying that soon, we’ll say, and stay the fuck out—and it sticks. Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published