I Didn’t Disappear. I Refused.

They outlawed my name first.

Not the one on my ID — that one they kept, with its masculine “Matthew” and that stiff, false “M” stamped next to sex, like a scar carved into paperwork.

No, they outlawed the name I chose — the one I bled into poems and painted onto protest signs, the one whispered with reverence by lovers and screamed into alleyways when I was afraid. The name that felt like breath. Like mine.

By April of 2025, state law required “legal conformity in all public and educational contexts.” Which meant every classroom, every payroll slip, every Starbucks name scribble — they erased me.

I wasn’t allowed to exist unless I lied about who I was.

But I didn’t disappear.

I refused.

My Mother’s Kitchen, Before the Fire

I remember the last time I saw my mother — really saw her — was in her kitchen, pre-dystopia. The year was 2023, and the world was still pretending civility.

She was stirring something, laughing at a podcast, and I said, “Mom, I want to tell you something.” And her hands paused mid-stir like the air got heavier.

I told her my truth. That I wasn’t her son. That I was her daughter. That my body felt like a jacket zipped onto the wrong soul.

She blinked. Put the spoon down.

She didn’t scream. Didn’t cry. Just nodded once, then walked out the back door to smoke.

She came back twenty minutes later, poured wine, and said, “Well, then I guess you need better clothes.”

That was the last time I felt safe with her. Because six months later, she was gone — cancer — and two months after that, the world started cracking open and bleeding its hate out in daylight.

Pride, 2024: When the Flags Burned

I marched in June 2024. I wore silver lipstick and a trans flag like a cape, even though local ordinances had been passed to “discourage provocative public display of identity,” whatever the hell that meant.

They arrested eighteen of us that day. I wasn’t one of them, but I watched as they were dragged by their backpacks into the backs of white vans. The air smelled like tear gas and smoke.

I looked up and saw a row of rainbow flags someone had hung from light poles that morning. By sundown, they were all on fire.

No one arrested the ones who set them ablaze. No police chased them. The city claimed “unidentifiable suspects” and released a bland statement about “protecting all citizens.”

That night, in a windowless queer bar underground, someone passed me a sticker that said:

WE EXIST TO BE SEEN

I stuck it to my chest like armor.

The Disappearance Act (and How to Break It)

In early 2025, the federal government passed something called The Cultural Protection Act — but the internet named it what it was: The Disappearance Act.

It banned drag in 37 states. Outlawed gender-affirming care under age 25 in 21. Stripped anti-discrimination language from federal housing documents. Libraries blacklisted queer authors. Social media platforms started shadow-banning LGBTQIA+ keywords.

And suddenly, existing was illegal unless it was hidden.

So we became architects of the underground.

Encrypted group chats. Password-protected zines. Pop-up “churches” that were just safe spaces in laundromats and basements.

We stopped asking to be tolerated. We learned to code survival into our breath.

I started leaving handwritten notes in bathrooms — sharpie on paper towels:

“You are not alone. You are loved. And they’re terrified of us because we won’t vanish.”

The Night They Took Ray

Ray was the closest thing I had to a sibling after my mom passed — a nonbinary firecracker with a voice that sounded like gravel soaked in honey. We met at a book club for banned queer fiction and stayed inseparable after that.

They ran a rogue hormone exchange and kept a closet full of thrifted prom dresses for any kid who needed to feel beautiful for a night.

One morning, they just... didn’t show.

Not for work. Not online. Not even at the backup server we kept for emergencies.

Three days later, someone posted grainy footage from a back alley in St. Louis. Ray, hooded, handcuffed, and shoved into a vehicle marked with nothing but a barcode.

We called every hotline. Filed missing person reports. Waited. Waited.

Still nothing.

I light a candle for them every night.

But They Can’t Kill a Story

See, the thing about queers is — we know how to survive in shadows.

Our love survived plagues.

Our identities survived colonial erasure.

Our joy survived conversion camps and closet doors and dinner tables gone cold.

So no matter how many laws they pass, no matter how many books they ban or names they erase — we write ourselves back.

In lipstick on mirrors.

In graffiti on freeway underpasses.

In poems etched into frost on windows.

I started writing again in February, when my roommate smuggled home a typewriter from a university dumpster — discarded like truth was disposable.

Now, I type manifestos on paper scraps and mail them to P.O. boxes in cities I’ll never visit.

One of them read:

“You outlawed my name, but you can’t un-know me. I’ve already rewritten your future.”

A Morning Kiss in a Burning World

This morning, I kissed someone with ink-stained fingers and a smile that cracked like light through boarded windows. Their name was Sol — short for solidarity, they said. They wore a septum ring and eyes full of rebellion.

• We kissed like the world might end at noon.
• We kissed like they hadn’t just passed another bill.
• We kissed like they’d never invented shame.

And for a minute, that kiss was a flag —

a protest —

a promise.

Pride, 2025: Still Here

I march again next week.

They say drones will be watching. That anyone displaying banned symbols risks being detained. But I’m going.

I’ll wear the same silver lipstick.

The same trans flag — this time not as a cape, but as a shield.

And on my chest, that sticker again: WE EXIST TO BE SEEN.

Because Pride isn’t a party anymore.

It’s war paint.

It’s church.

It’s truth tattooed onto the sky so they can’t ever erase us again.

Because I didn’t disappear.

I refuse to.