Ren Parks

“Most of our time is spent not in the present tense, as we so often claim, but in the irrealis mood—the mood of our fantasy life, the mood where we can shamelessly envision what might be, should be, could have been, who we ourselves wished we really were if only we knew the open sesame to what might otherwise have been our true lives.”
― André Aciman, Homo Irrealis: Essays

“In this space right here
that we have made for each other,
you can say anything
and I will not abandon you.
Unwrap the worst things you have done.
Watch me hold them up to the light
and not even flinch.”
― Trista Mateer

“We were like children who've suffered an outrage but refuse to confide it to their parents because the shame, which should never have been theirs, was now theirs to shoulder. For us, identity was a mask, not a face. We were provisional people, born sidelined on the wrong side of history. No one was like us, which was why we hid. We were wrong people.”
― André Aciman, Roman Year: A Memoir

“The future is who we become in the next forty-five seconds.”
― Adam Zmith, Deep Sniff: A History of Poppers and Queer Futures