I do use art as a site of protest, particularly in relation to dominant narratives.
I couldn't write about love without writing about hate - specifically, how the experience of hatred embeds itself in the body and prevents love from entering or leaving.
When I was writing, I wanted every word to be not only deliberate, but musical. Precious.
Music is my first love, where my artistic journey began.
Art can sometimes be separate from the artist.
Of course, I can't separate my queerness from my brownness - if anything, my queerness amplifies my brownness, and vice versa - but I spent so much of my early twenties trying to erase my differences, often without awareness of what I was doing.