In an interview with Bryan Washington for A24 Podcast, “All The Ways to Be,” Ocean Vuong said, “Being queer saved my life. Often we see queerness as deprivation. But when I look at my life, I saw that queerness demanded an alternative innovation from me. I had to make alternative routes; it made me curious; it made me ask, ‘Is this enough for me?’” This insight from Vuong has stayed with me since I heard it. It has made me look back at my life and ask myself, How did I survive? 

As a queer first generation Mexican-American, I write at the intersections of grief, identity, and culture, always keeping in mind the liminality of living in the physical and metaphorical border. Moreover, I question what living in-between spaces and identity does to one. Across my work, I challenge form and use the imagery of language to render the ways violence and love work in tandem, both at the personal and interpersonal level. 

When I ruminate on the word “survival,” I contemplate about how all my life I’ve been looking for ways of escape—how since a child I was aware of where all emergency exit signs were located, how when I enter every room I make sure I know where the exit and quickest way out is, and how I don’t like to sit with my back facing movement. Growing up, I didn’t know it at the time, but I was trying to outrun my own truths. I thought, If something is revealed, I know how to get out of here stat! Most of my need to vanish came because I was afraid to speak. Language and visibility came to me late. In my twenties, I began to realize the capability of finding truth through writing. 

For me, a poem is composed of two things: truth and an escape route. Truth becomes all the components in a poem in which truth wants to be told in—language, image, metaphor, etc. The escape route becomes the form of the poem. These two components are crucial to my own writing and development. When I sit down to write, I’m able to dip into a pocket of memories, conjure the moment back in real time and I ask myself, How are we getting out of this situation? 

To write about my own happenings means to be vulnerable—to risk it all on the page. By writing authentically, I am already creating so much tension in the poem and keeping my reader hungry for more revelations. In Audre Lorde’s essay “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” she proposes we must not be afraid of visibility. In fact, she says we fear visibility because we have been conditioned by silence to stay invisible. Throughout this essay, Audre Lorde goes on to say if we never speak our truths, we never become a whole person. These two central points in the essay have given me the courage and curiosity to not only write my own truths but to also venture into the unknown and ask myself, How do I want my truths to be seen? 

However, my favorite part is then asking what is on the page, How do you want to be seen—How do you want to escape off the page? Creating a form on a page calls for innovation of the imagination. Most importantly, form calls for visibility. I see the world through a lens of structure possibilities. I often tell students, Look around you, how can you create what is in front of you into a form in your writing? Most importantly, I ask myself, How is the form on the page elevating the tension of what is already contained? Form requires awareness of not only the world around us but of oneself. 

It is never clear which will come first, the truth or the escape route. Sometimes both emerge at the same time and other times one pulls more than the other. I constantly have to keep telling myself, the first draft is just a draft. The expectation of writing something magical on the first try is rare. It has happened before but only a handful of times. Revision is the most valuable tool to me because this is where I am able to keep questioning the truth and form on the page. 

I think a lot about the moments where silence overtook a conversation or a moment. About how I should have been more vocal then. For me, writing in a way is also about regaining my agency. Poetry has given me the magic of reimagining what my life could have been if I had gone towards a different path. Sometimes I spend weeks or months spiraling, thinking of what my life could have been like if my parents never immigrated to the United States, what would my life be if I never owned up to my identity as a queer man, or what I should’ve said when the man I loved struck me across the face for the first time. By invoking moments of surrealism and strangeness in my writing, I’m able to contribute to my evolving poetics but more importantly, I’m able to push reality. I have the power to transform my truth the way I want it to be read and I’m able to shape it through form. 

There are some things in this life I will never be able to escape from and I have to come to terms with those monsters and moments. For now, I ask of myself and others to go write your truth and find your escape.