Queer Joy is Found in the Weeds

Queer joy is the sunshine on my skin on a not-too-hot day. 

It’s walking my dog down the street, watching her bounce and sniff and enjoy nature, even though she’s old and her health is failing her and she’s losing her vision.

It’s smelling the honeysuckle as I pass the undeveloped lots in my neighborhood, the ones that are homes to bunnies and squirrels and snakes and raccoons, the ones that hold little daisies and the flowers people call weeds and why do we call them weeds?

What makes a plant a weed?

The internet defines it as a plant growing where it is not wanted and in competition with cultivated plants, or as a plant considered undesirable in a particular situation, growing where it conflicts with human preferences, needs, or goals.

I wonder sometimes if that’s how the world views those of us who bend what some of humankind claims is typical, required, the norm. 

Those of us who expand beyond our prescribed and expected roles, sexualities, gender identities, lives. 

Those of us who realize this life is so much more than adhering to binaries or making others comfortable by jamming ourselves into boxes we don’t fit in.

Aren’t we also a plant?

Aren’t we also a growing, living thing with roots and a need for sunshine and oxygen and water?

What makes a weed a weed other than it existing in a place where a human didn’t put it? Other than it existing in a space that competes with human planning, human preference, human arrogance?

I see the dandelions, the daisies, the tiny purple blossoms of a weed whose name I do not know, and I see beauty. 

I see love. 

I see tenacity and strength. 

I see the collective willpower of a tiny plant which can crack cement poured by humans who claim to know best for the earth while they simultaneously destroy every inch of it.

I know there are semantics around the classifying nature of a weed.

I know that some weeds are not so simply defined. 

But I also know that sometimes, weeds are only really weeds because they grow where they are not wanted.

So, queer joy is the flowering weeds in the abandoned lots down the street from me, and it is the rainbow in the sky after a thunderstorm, and it is the queer family down the street from me who sells lemonade with their daughter, and it is my dog’s paw prints in the wet sand on the beach, and it is the sunshine on my skin on a not-too-hot day.

Queer joy is everything, collectively, that reminds us of our humanity, of our existence, of our love.

Queer joy is found in the weeds.