1.


I see a child take their singlet off in front of an unclouded bathroom mirror.
And pose
sideways. Look
at their still flat chest, deciding if they’ll get away with cutting their
swimming suit in half, and tucking something into their bottoms.
When they go swimming with their newly found friends next day.

I see a child freeze. A bee approaches them in the garden.
They halt their breathing when it hovers
oh so close.
Question their own. Gender—
does it make you a girl if you are frightened easily by insects?

I see a child visiting the village of their relatives and everyone they meet
would like to know their age and how they are related to so-and-so. Discuss
who they remind them of.
And then decide based on the length of the child’s hair, solely, whether to
call them
gorgeous
or to praise their apparent strength and bravery.

The relative accompanying the child rushes to correct.
She. He. He. She.
The duel of pronouns ensues. A ricochet above the child’s head.

It’s Mikael. Lucia. Me.
Again Lucia.

It’s bees and water everywhere
in my memories and films I watch.
And I no longer know what’s what.
Whose queer childhoods.

Mikael is swimming. Lucia is swimming. I am swimming.

And I am booking tickets to another queer childhood film to see with a
dear friend of mine. That’s two in just one week surrounding your birthday,
she points out smiling: 20,000 Species of Bees and Monster.
(And Tomboy that I streamed without you last week, I want to add. But I
just smile back).

I am looking,
I think,
to fill the lacunae between the things that I remember.
Where a sensation of not-being-present
is pooling. And where
its accompanying vagueness can’t make up
for what has never been acknowledged.

And when I read the scenes above out loud I can’t help but notice how they
resonate.
Within my body they are indistinguishable
whether the words come from my diary
or outline something I’ve seen on screen.

Performance and authenticity might seem at odds, or even opposites, but
aren’t we always dependant on the shared, borrowed from each other
gestures, storylines, vocabularies when we either are contriving our lives or
trying at a later time to language our pasts.




2.


I take out silver prints. A faded stack I store inside an envelope on the
bookshelf.

And it’s me and my grandfather

this time we are on the beach.

Here, I am sitting in front of him, leaning my back against him. And our
arms are folded in a gesture of, well… nothing in particular…
It’s just a shape we made.
A pleasing visual echo of each other’s body we composed inadvertently.

And here—I am in the shallow water of the Azov.
His childhood sea. My childhood sea.
Its name now borrowed by the ordinary heroes—a battalion of defenders
of Mariupol. A small town nearby that now made them famous.

Here, between Leena,
with braids arranged into loops,
tied up to stop them soaking in salty water,
and a boy
whose name is lost (perhaps, a neighbours’ child?)
I am smiling
and I am perfect.
I am neither–nor.
I could not
do it better if I tried, deliberately.

And the photograph is modest in size and slightly tilted. Printed in the
makeshift darkroom in the bathroom. Corners are slightly bent, but
composition reveals a practiced eye and hand.
In yet another coastal location, approximately thirty years prior, the same
photographer took pictures of
my newborn mother,
and her older sister,
their nanny,
my grandmother,
the US navy ships,
communication tower locations,
idillyc islands
strung along the coast of Greece.
But that’s a story for another time.

Here, he simply framed three children sitting in the shallow water.
And then I shiver realising that this boy, whose name I do not know, is now
in his forties.
Like me. This boy.
Was killed in war? Still fighting? And my throat closes up.

Next print is me and my grandmother. In the playground, on the high
shore with view over the sea. I am hanging off the bars above the slide. My
grandmother is keeping watch from under her oversized sun hat. And she is
working on something delicate that’s resting in her lap.

A pair of lacy socks is in the making here. To be held up by delicate
crocheted ties with the cherry-size pompoms that make a dainty bow below
my skinny knees. An outlier in my wardrobe of red and navy corduroys and
sweaters—all hand-me-downs from a cousin.

I barely had any clothes suited for a girl. And maybe, it begins
to bother my grandmother. And she wants to correct this.

Maybe, it’s a summer when we are on the brink.
Of tensions
caused by boyish misdemeanours.
Of voiced concerns
and stopping me
from climbing trees. Correcting
manners inappropriate for girls.

The image of a boyish child in the lacy knee-highs is sweetly camp, but I
could not know this at the time, and I objected. It will be a long while till I
understand that you can feel and look not less but more a boy when wearing a
dress.

What is the word for a bookish, shy, sensitive tomboy
in lacy knee-highs?

How do we read her?

A bee is circling around to suggest an answer.