Dear chubby queer kid

I know those words feel like insults now

But someday you will learn to own them

To wear them like medals you earned

Because you did earn them

Fighting every day to survive

And it didn’t go unnoticed

 

Dear chubby queer kid

You’re not alone anymore

And I don’t mean you won’t be single on Valentine’s Day, that still happens

Trust me.

But not every year

And you have friends now

Friends who call

And friends who care

And friends who don’t value you worth on perceived popularity

 

Dear chubby queer kid

Being alone on Valentine’s Day,

Isn’t really that bad

You can have potato chips

And chocolate

And all your favorite C words

And champagne is a new one I will teach you someday.

 

Dear chubby queer kid

Some words never stop hurting

And some people never stop hurting you

And sometimes the people you love

Can cut you the deepest

But you can learn to stop loving them

I promise

And sometimes you have to

Survival is a skill you learned long ago

And you will never be out of practice

 

Dear chubby queer kid

You will gain more weight

And you will lose some too

And there’s this pandemic coming

when you won’t want to eat for weeks

And then you’ll eat too much for weeks

And mint chocolate chip is still the best ice cream flavor you have ever tried

And your dad can go suck a dick

With his opinion that it isn’t

 

Dear chubby queer kid.

I found your notes

The ones you burned

The ones you stuffed in a box under your bed.

And I saw the tear drops that distorted the ink on the paper.

But someday you’ll be able to talk about it.

Someday your words will become battle cries

Epitaphs, love songs, navigation maps,

And not every single night will end in tears.

 

Dear chubby queer kid

Smoking pot will not kill you

But you won’t like it very much either

And if you’re only doing it because your friends are saying you have to,

Find new friends

And if you’re only doing it because your boyfriend says you have to

Find a new boyfriend

You will learn to let go of every man you have ever loved

Because you will also learn

That you deserve so much more

Than their broken promises

There is no harm in waiting

for the right season to bloom

 

Dear chubby queer kid

If an older boy touches you inappropriately do not be afraid to tell on him

If a girl touches you inappropriately, it does not make you weak to tell on them.

Or to tell them no.

When a professor sends you pictures of his cock and tells you to come to his house

GET HIS ASS FIRED.

DO NOT GO TO THAT HOUSE

And if a man says he will never love you

Do not wait around to see if he changes his mind.

 

Chubby queer kid, you are the collection of every scar you endured

Every moment you felt alive

And every choice you made to arrive here today.

Let them try and knock you down

Let them throw their words

And swords

And anything else at you.

The rain will wash it away in time

They’re homophobic after all, not hydrophobic.

Let hate dissolve in the showers of spring

Let the blood wash off your cheek bones

And do not let anyone treat you as lesser.

 

Deer chubby queer kid.

If a girl says she wants you to be her “gay best friend”

Know that is all she sees in you

That she does not really see you

And let her go

If a straight man calls you a slur in front of his friends tell him you still have the nudes he sent you, and be sure all his friends here you say it.

If a gay man calls you “fatty” or anything else along those lines,

Remind yourself how scared or insecure he really is

Do not mention how his boyfriend is still in your DM’s.

How your bed still smells like his cologne

And how this “fatty” is everything that man will ever wish he could be.