Before the Brush

The Shape of Silence, Installment Two

On the Last Day of Pride

There is something about the last day of Pride Month that always makes me pause.

Not because queerness belongs to June. It doesn’t. It belongs to ordinary Tuesdays, grocery store parking lots, first kisses, grief, friendship, chosen family, bodies that keep becoming home, and the quiet decision to keep telling the truth.

Pride has always been more than celebration. It is remembrance. It is protest. It is joy that survived anyway. It is the long inheritance of people who refused to disappear, who loved one another loudly enough that the rest of us could imagine larger lives for ourselves.

Every year, June reminds me that none of us arrive here alone. We inherit language from those who came before us. We inherit courage. We inherit possibility. We also inherit the unfinished work of making a world where all of us can belong—not just for one month, but every day that follows.

As a queer writer, I think often about the stories we carry and the ones we are finally able to tell. Every poem, every essay, every whispered truth between friends becomes part of that inheritance. Writing, for me, has always been a way of saying: I was here. We were here. We loved. We survived. We imagined something larger.

It feels fitting, then, to share this next story today.

This Week's Story

Today I’m sharing the second installment of The Shape of Silence: Before the Brush.

This piece lives in the place where care and fear first learned each other’s names. It’s about touch, tenderness, and what happens when the body begins to imagine that gentleness might be possible.

I’ve included the audio recording below. These stories began as pieces meant to be spoken, and I hope you’ll listen if you have a quiet few minutes—a porch, a walk, a cup of coffee, or the last light of the evening.

Thank You for Listening

Thank you for the way you’ve been holding this series. Every message, every comment, every person who has said, “I saw myself here,” reminds me why I write.

One of the greatest gifts of sharing these stories has been watching them become conversations. So many of you have written to tell me about your own memories, your own bodies, your own moments of recognition. Thank you for trusting me with those pieces of yourselves. It is a privilege I don’t take lightly.

This season is unfolding in beautiful ways. There are poems finding their way into the world, new spaces for writing together, and gatherings that are slowly taking shape. I’ll share more when the time is right, but for now I’m sitting with gratitude and a little bit of wonder.

A Small Ritual

Before you go, I’d love to leave you with a small ritual.

Find something living that asks nothing of you. A patch of clover pushing through a crack in the pavement. A rabbit at dusk. The smell of basil on your fingertips after cooking. A moth. A breeze moving one branch but not the others.

Stay with it for one full minute.

Let your body remember that not everything in the world is asking you to brace.

Then ask yourself:

What part of me has been waiting for this kind of attention?

Happy Pride, friends.

May you keep choosing the life that asks you to become more fully yourself.

With love,

Isa