Queer Soul
by FUNMILAYO OBASA
Dear Queer Soul,
Each time, as a child, I saw a rainbow, I ran into the balcony of the three-bedroom apartment to watch it fade. We gathered to look at a miracle unfold, shortly after, it rained. My parents would tell me to pray. Perhaps, the rain that came after was a determinant of the prayers I would eventually forget the next day.
One time I saw a rainbow reflect off the cream-colored wall in the sitting room. It was beautiful. I was astounded by the spectrum that lay sleepily. I looked to see where it was coming from: the day was bright, the sky blue, and the sun's light so bright a part of it came in through the window, but no band of seven strips arched over the rustic environment. Later, I would realize that the spectrum on the wall was not a rainbow but a reaction of sunlight hitting the shiny bottom of a compact disc a few meters from the window.
It is a thing of immense beauty and gratitude to see a rainbow. Seven vaunt colours represented in seven moving lines. I think about you and other LGBTQ+ folks and how you all have found meaning in it. How the rainbow is now an interface of diversity and pride. The colours of the pride rainbow did not just metamorphose into reality; the struggles, the recalcitrance, the discrimination, the oppression, the homophobia, the deaths, and births of your community painted the dyes on earth’s land, for they are closer to us than the sky. Your pains collected a blot from the sky-high rainbow as if to say, “please give me a piece of you, bolster me with you.” And now, it expands, brooking towards unearthing an identity.
...
"When was the last time you saw a rainbow?" My roommate asked while she scrolled through her phone, sitting in a meditative posture. The talk I had with her had now drifted into the advent of an impending apocalypse.
"I can't remember, possibly five years ago. Or later," I answered.
"When end time is near, we stop seeing beautiful things," she said again. "We stop seeing butterflies, we stop seeing rainbows. I can't remember the last time I saw a rainbow. The bad things happening in the world are too, too much to bear and that means the world will end soon.”
“That is what the Qur'an says, anyways,” she said after a brief pause.
This was a month before a rainbow appeared in October. When I stepped out, I met a rainbow arcing over the buildings behind the verdant trees. I stepped out to see a rainbow and it gave me hope; shortly after, it rained like always. Each colour carried a significance.
Queer Soul, kindly ensure that you wear each significance wherever you go. Love is boundless. Love is inextricable. Love is multidimensional. You have so many edifices to build and rest in. There are plenty, plenty of colours flailing in you as magical spirals. So, know this, sing with it, splay the goodness of your revival everywhere.
Red is for Infatuation
I love that you love whomever you deem love to fit. I love that you have found you—no one should take it away. I love that your body embraces change—this change is for us all. I love that you are a queer soul. I love that your whole body is filled with hues. With red flowing through you; with red, your life, exuding from you with a flush pink colour to the brown dark chocolate. I love how fearless you want to be. I love how your skin may feel under your lover's palms. I love your identity, the intonation that marks your name, that spells your name, that gives your name meaning.
Orange is the Sun, Set Ablaze
As the sun goes behind the horizon, I think of the nights you stay with your lover. I think of the nights you cradle your new-found identity. I think of the times you lay in their arms uncompromised. Of how easy it is to sleep and wake in them. Orange is the colour of you and him, her, or they in silhouettes holding close the monument of a new becoming.
Yellow is for Hope
Hope is the sunlight that hits the compact disc. Hope is seven colours splattered on the wall, on your face. Hope is the time I sat in a classroom while the art teacher taught us each colour of the rainbow has a meaning. Hope is when you go out exonerated; when you let the rainbow move through you; when you let the moon exacerbate your desires. It is when your friends do the same. The rainbow has seven colours, each colour is a representation of you and all others across the world.
Green is for Life
Each leaf of a Pride of Barbados tree reminds me of you; small, yet plenty. A terse smile lines your face. Your eyes look lost in wonder, in tenderness. Each leaf of the Pride of Barbados tree that sprawled its branches in front of my old home reminds me of your fragility. The trunk reminds me of how sturdy you are. I have construed its red flowers to be like you in a mirror.
Blue is for Serenity
The ocean is your friend, like I. I imagine you in a boat or reposed on the clear body of blue floating flamboyantly. I imagine you embracing a fundamental buoyancy on the water. You know, like you lay there, unfazed while you go with it. Wherever it goes, you go.
Indigo is for Posterity
This is you and your lover together and the many years you have to fight. This is the two of you in each other, both of you in your veins. Both of you on the bed… This is not sadness, it is you, everywhere! It is a history of you and your people. A history of your fight and battles: Stonewall, CAMP, Gays Week, ACT-UP, Pride March, all of it. A reminder of your heartbeats; you are alive and this representation will not die.
Violet is for Reminiscence
In school, two girls were shamed for being lesbians. Two girls were flogged in front of the assembly ground with twenty strokes of the slender bamboo cane for passing love notes to each other. This hate boils in a volcano and erupts on your new-found island. They say the antecedent of the problem is found in the brain. They say you are a pernicious outlier that has come to disrupt the construct. But don’t be perturbed by them. This rainbow can never diminish because in it are memories and people, identities with distinctions.
Queer Soul, the sky is vast, but the rainbow no longer dwells there. The land is now its domicile. You are now its home.
With love and rainbows,
Funmilayo.
by FUNMILAYO OBASA
Dear Queer Soul,
Each time, as a child, I saw a rainbow, I ran into the balcony of the three-bedroom apartment to watch it fade. We gathered to look at a miracle unfold, shortly after, it rained. My parents would tell me to pray. Perhaps, the rain that came after was a determinant of the prayers I would eventually forget the next day.
One time I saw a rainbow reflect off the cream-colored wall in the sitting room. It was beautiful. I was astounded by the spectrum that lay sleepily. I looked to see where it was coming from: the day was bright, the sky blue, and the sun's light so bright a part of it came in through the window, but no band of seven strips arched over the rustic environment. Later, I would realize that the spectrum on the wall was not a rainbow but a reaction of sunlight hitting the shiny bottom of a compact disc a few meters from the window.
It is a thing of immense beauty and gratitude to see a rainbow. Seven vaunt colours represented in seven moving lines. I think about you and other LGBTQ+ folks and how you all have found meaning in it. How the rainbow is now an interface of diversity and pride. The colours of the pride rainbow did not just metamorphose into reality; the struggles, the recalcitrance, the discrimination, the oppression, the homophobia, the deaths, and births of your community painted the dyes on earth’s land, for they are closer to us than the sky. Your pains collected a blot from the sky-high rainbow as if to say, “please give me a piece of you, bolster me with you.” And now, it expands, brooking towards unearthing an identity.
...
"When was the last time you saw a rainbow?" My roommate asked while she scrolled through her phone, sitting in a meditative posture. The talk I had with her had now drifted into the advent of an impending apocalypse.
"I can't remember, possibly five years ago. Or later," I answered.
"When end time is near, we stop seeing beautiful things," she said again. "We stop seeing butterflies, we stop seeing rainbows. I can't remember the last time I saw a rainbow. The bad things happening in the world are too, too much to bear and that means the world will end soon.”
“That is what the Qur'an says, anyways,” she said after a brief pause.
This was a month before a rainbow appeared in October. When I stepped out, I met a rainbow arcing over the buildings behind the verdant trees. I stepped out to see a rainbow and it gave me hope; shortly after, it rained like always. Each colour carried a significance.
Queer Soul, kindly ensure that you wear each significance wherever you go. Love is boundless. Love is inextricable. Love is multidimensional. You have so many edifices to build and rest in. There are plenty, plenty of colours flailing in you as magical spirals. So, know this, sing with it, splay the goodness of your revival everywhere.
Red is for Infatuation
I love that you love whomever you deem love to fit. I love that you have found you—no one should take it away. I love that your body embraces change—this change is for us all. I love that you are a queer soul. I love that your whole body is filled with hues. With red flowing through you; with red, your life, exuding from you with a flush pink colour to the brown dark chocolate. I love how fearless you want to be. I love how your skin may feel under your lover's palms. I love your identity, the intonation that marks your name, that spells your name, that gives your name meaning.
Orange is the Sun, Set Ablaze
As the sun goes behind the horizon, I think of the nights you stay with your lover. I think of the nights you cradle your new-found identity. I think of the times you lay in their arms uncompromised. Of how easy it is to sleep and wake in them. Orange is the colour of you and him, her, or they in silhouettes holding close the monument of a new becoming.
Yellow is for Hope
Hope is the sunlight that hits the compact disc. Hope is seven colours splattered on the wall, on your face. Hope is the time I sat in a classroom while the art teacher taught us each colour of the rainbow has a meaning. Hope is when you go out exonerated; when you let the rainbow move through you; when you let the moon exacerbate your desires. It is when your friends do the same. The rainbow has seven colours, each colour is a representation of you and all others across the world.
Green is for Life
Each leaf of a Pride of Barbados tree reminds me of you; small, yet plenty. A terse smile lines your face. Your eyes look lost in wonder, in tenderness. Each leaf of the Pride of Barbados tree that sprawled its branches in front of my old home reminds me of your fragility. The trunk reminds me of how sturdy you are. I have construed its red flowers to be like you in a mirror.
Blue is for Serenity
The ocean is your friend, like I. I imagine you in a boat or reposed on the clear body of blue floating flamboyantly. I imagine you embracing a fundamental buoyancy on the water. You know, like you lay there, unfazed while you go with it. Wherever it goes, you go.
Indigo is for Posterity
This is you and your lover together and the many years you have to fight. This is the two of you in each other, both of you in your veins. Both of you on the bed… This is not sadness, it is you, everywhere! It is a history of you and your people. A history of your fight and battles: Stonewall, CAMP, Gays Week, ACT-UP, Pride March, all of it. A reminder of your heartbeats; you are alive and this representation will not die.
Violet is for Reminiscence
In school, two girls were shamed for being lesbians. Two girls were flogged in front of the assembly ground with twenty strokes of the slender bamboo cane for passing love notes to each other. This hate boils in a volcano and erupts on your new-found island. They say the antecedent of the problem is found in the brain. They say you are a pernicious outlier that has come to disrupt the construct. But don’t be perturbed by them. This rainbow can never diminish because in it are memories and people, identities with distinctions.
Queer Soul, the sky is vast, but the rainbow no longer dwells there. The land is now its domicile. You are now its home.
With love and rainbows,
Funmilayo.
Oluwafunmilayo Obasa, a non-fiction writer, poet, and photographer is passionate about documenting muffled stories with her art. Writing from Kwara, Abuja, or whichever place she finds herself, her words tend to paint the spontaneity of her imagination, humanity & equality [for all], desires, and emotions, in abstract ways, forging a relationship between society and existence.