By Molly Bernardin (she/they)

Age: 23

Location:

Instagram: @molsdoesmols

Website: mollybernardin.com

Those who live by The Sea

can hardly form a single thought

of which The Sea would not be part

(Hermann Broch)

〜

Queer comes The Sun, whose grammatical gender was female and then male and now who knows what. French says male and Germanic says female and The Sun (who does improv) says yes and.

You were born and raised on the border.

Your town was German before being French before being German

before being French before being German before being French.

You remember the German years. You remember Gaston becoming Gustov

because French names were banned.

You remember words becoming oppressive and rebellious.

You remember The Sun changing.

Your dialect came from French and German

and became both

and became neither.

Here cums The Sun

whose centre darkens when you focus

hardon them.

We watch The Sun break through darkness over The Beach.

We decide vaginal pleasure is The Sun seen through closed eyelids

and anal is embers and deep orange

and central darkness.

Warm colours spread across The Sky and merge -

purple and green and orange and

these words cannot contain their many meanings.

You carve your name into sand

and watch one gentle wave erase you.

You: oh well

We move across rock pools -

we sea purple and green and orange anemone - and molluscs who will change gender three times. Treasures reveal themselves and spaces expand when tides can move.

The Beach is the edge - the border between queer

and there - between being grounded and baseless.

We wade into the border

and cannot feel where we end and where the water begins -

are absorbed like raindrops -

our bodies of water merging (which once meant losing identity).

You moved from the border between countries

and arrived here ( the border between elements )

when you were thirteen -

Our suburban streets were concrete closets

and you missed open spaces.

Then you found The Sea.

Our bodies are halved -

below our waists we are water.

You push forwards onto your front

and The Sea takes your weight -

you are almost entirely water now.

Seaweeds brush against us

and feel like strange creatures.

So many locals never swim because they fear the strange creatures they cannot see -

the strange creatures who are alive because they stay hidden

underwater.

You said you experience queerness in water more than in same sex kisses.

Queerness in movement

and floating

and waves which look like blank pages from the shore.

Queerness in the most natural substance -

and the most unexplored.

We experience queerness in obliterating norms more than being non-normative.

Being non-normative means our existence relies on the terms we resist -

means queerness dissolves when same sex kisses enter main

streams. Obliterating norms means queerness is personal

and endless.

Questions crash onto the sure - dislodging pebbles and certainties.

can our queerness really be endless and moving

and colour changing and wordless and water and

The answer is yes and

〜

Before:

Your ginger head looks like The Sun against the blue corridors and your school desk hovers six surname letters behind mine. That six-lettered space writes us one word world apart and I learn nothing else about you

and then

our eyes loch in the local pool

and we have something in common greater than classrooms and corridors.

Now: consider this

Seeing where bodies are situated in space is easier than seeing where sexual and gendered experiences are situated. (bodies are externally visible whereas sexual and gendered experiences are internal)
- Seeing various bodies occupy the same physical space is impossible.
  - Because we cannot see sexual and gendered experiences we assume various experiences can occupy the same space.
    - Sea this Spectrum:

Sea the clean borders and straight lines and dimensional flatness

Remember that mainstream culture considers this image (The

Spectrum) as one which represents diverse sexual and gendered experiences.

Suppose we visually Reimag(e)ine sexual and gendered experiences as ‘bodies’ in three dimensional spaces.

Imag(e)ine that experiences cannot occupy the exact same space - though can be in close proximity

Imag(e)ine sexual and gendered experiences as mobile bodies (changing sexual and gendered coordinates) and also as specific bodies (perhaps our own)

Imag(e)ine we are moving around inside gender and sexuality - where are we?

we are underwater

where light becomes fragmented -

becomes many things rather than one thing.

Your acne cratered face smiles (pulling me over)

and soon we are swimming (which once meant being in motion) together.

We swim in love in water

(because in water we cannot fall).

We know our love and our queerness

are labels we must colour in and make our own

I know you love me - but tell me what that means

I know you are queer

and I know no man ever steps in the same word twice

so tell me what that means

or rather tell me where that means

You: Where am I in Queerness? I am in rough, sandy water - maybe in

The Channel - moving on the currents

Me: Give me your coordinates and we can move beside one another

We watch each other undress on shores

and swim from norms which hold us down (gravity and clothes and landlocked laws and-

Hours have passed now

and The Sun floats above the high seas (the mare liberum - the free seas).

These free seas hold us even as our bodies move and change -

never asking questions - never demanding explanation -

whatever we lose (like a you or a me)

it’s always ourselves we find in The Sea (E.E. Cummings)

and inside The Sea which is the border which is our queerness

we lose our you’s and our me’s and find our our’s and our selves’ -

lose our singularities and find our pluralities.

Borders are represented as thin lines but there are thin lines between thin lines and worlds - and the borders which are thin lines which are worlds between places which are labels are expanding like universes - and the labels which are suns are growing apart - and inside every space there are millions more - and we can improvise inside these spaces because every yes

and creates another scenario to live inside - which is what queerness has always been doing anyway - creating more space for more diverse experiences - and we need more because In English there are no words. All the language we have created - transgender, transsexual, drag queen, drag king, stone butch, high femme, Nellie, fairy, bulldyke, he-she, FTM, MTF - places us in relationship to masculine or feminine, between the two, combining the two, moving from one to the other. I yearn for an image to describe my gendered self, not the shadow land of neither boy nor girl, [or] a suspension bridge tethered between negatives. (Eli Clare)

We agree that queerness cannot be The Sea between these ‘opposing’ countries

without also being the blood inside both their citizens’ bodies

without also being the shape-changing clouds moving across their ‘borders’.

Queerness is endless.

Water created earth and plants and animals and cultures queerly - needed no male and no female - no gendered seeds and no gendered bodies. Our existence is queer consequence. Straightness and cisness and categories are queer consequence - this is where we come from.

You knew you were queer before you knew words like pansexual and polyamorous and transmasculine - your queerness was wordless as the anemones whose categorical names you never learned - whose tentacles you adored.

When words became available

they also became anchors

and we became landlocked sailors.

and then we came across a sentence which ended our landlocked one. The sentence was a unique shape made from universal words -

It said

there’s romance [in] letting an individual

experience of desire take precedence over a

categorical one. (Maggie Nelson)

The romance described was a unique shape made from universal feelings.

The sentence said we could share words without sharing sentences -

share experiences without sharing labels -

could move through queerness without harboring ourselves.

now...

we are swimming together every full moon

because waters are stronger

when cratered faces show themselves

and sometimes we sleep on stones

and sea The Sun practice their improv

on The Horizon.

The waves are kissing your shoulders

when you mention changing your pronouns

and then They swallow you

and you cannot sense where you end

and where They begin

You said you were unshore about telling me -

unshore that the pronouns could contain your nuances -

and then you swam

and became shore

because one label could never contain The Sea -

Because people have been making novels and poems and music about The Sea for centuries

and no words have ever contained all Their nuances

Words cannot contain nuances - can only swim through them.

So you swim as you tell me

yes - you are non-binary -

and -

you are The Sea’s continual reorganisation and you are producing lives which emerge as difference and you are plurality and you are inexhaustible possibilities and you are roughness and softness (both) ( no - not both - all ) and you are moving tides and cloudy water and roaring and whispers and not only who but how you desire and how you are and how you move through the world and you are beyond gender and you are kinks and you are emergent and flexible and endless and playful and unrestrained and eroding norms and moving at many speeds and nonlinear and you are history and flesh and you say defining is limiting and you are thousand of suns reflected on the waves and you are a queer fish and you are finding more ways of being in pleasure and becoming more whole and you are unboxed and weightless and always in movement and a blank page and the ocean (which is the opposite of a closet) and you are heat and warmth and wetness and you are and and you are and and you are and and and and and

Dear And