here

we are here.
we were always here.
we will always be here.
where are you?

we are here

…but we shouldn’t be here.

As pride season arrives in June 2026, I see some of my favourite trans writers and activists write sombre posts, acknowledging the reality of where we are as a society. They write with urgency, scraping the barrel of their depleting energy in service of messages of solidarity, power, resilience.

But I am held down by the weight of dissonance.

we were always here

…but I wasn’t always here.

As a brown trans immigrant in the U.S. in 2026 there is no rest nor respite from feeling a constant sense of alienation. The little protections that we win in our purportedly safe blue states can be yanked from me with one flick of a dictator’s bruised wrist, forcing me back to my country assigned at birth—India.

India just eroded its trans rights. These were hard-won rights through lengthy legal processes that resulted in a landmark Supreme Court judgement back in the 2010s. This recent assault puts trans people in India in a situation so regressive that it rivals those of the former colonial oppressors. In a matter of days these fascists dismantled what we won after decades of fighting the “right way”.

But even those rights only existed only on-paper, and in the burning flames of hope within us trans people.

The rights that were only granted when presented with a form filled in triplicate, after it is rubber-stamped by a power-tripping bureaucrat, but only after you pay him his bribe. Rights that are conveniently ignored when a landlord denies housing to the rare trans tenant who can afford to pay rent. Rights that don’t apply when a policeman realizes he can assault a trans sex worker without repercussions.

I’ve never experienced living in India as a trans person. I discovered my trans identity in the privilege of relative safety of a blue state in the U.S. But these recurring nightmares about living in India haunt me often, with details constructed from careful reading of dozens of anecdotes. I now cling onto these nightmares because I don’t want to imagine how much worse it is going to get since we lost these rights.

Rights granted only on-paper, can be erased with blood.

we will always be here

…unless we are killed.

I’ve tried in vain to explain to the people around me the level of debilitating, disorienting anxiety I feel about my situation. Queer and trans people (especially those who are not on a visa) don’t understand what its like to live a life that can be upturned overnight with an executive order, policy change, or a government-mandated kidnapping and detention.

Often my dear, painfully ignorant, cis friends ask a well-meaning question “where can you go that’s safe?” Imagine letting everything go just to avoid being killed or tortured. That’s the picture the question brings to my mind.

There are active concentration camps to hold brown-skinned people like me. Extra-judicial killings and lynchings of trans people have long started, and have only escalated in the past month. I may eventually have to leave and save myself if this trajectory worsens.

And where will I go? Even if some countries suddenly grow a spine and start offering asylum for trans refugees from the US, that probably won’t help me because I’m not a US citizen. Having a passport from the “Global South” doesn’t provide the same privileges of easy travel, or visas, as a passport from a white-person/coloniser country does. My options are far fewer with far more restrictions.

The jarring dissonance of it all is that I can’t imagine a better, safer place than where I am right now. I have a job. I have a valid visa that keeps me here. I can wear whatever I want in my city, and walk around and encounter trans and queer people everywhere living their deliciously boring lives. Even if we briefly notice the bubbling cauldron of existential fear behind our eyes as we pass each other by.

It fills me with rage that I have to constantly imagine places where I can move to safety instead of living the life I have here. I don’t want to leave. I want to be here.

are you here?

are you seeing what’s happening?

These are not “unprecedented” times. Your failure to see the precedent does not make it unprecedented.

Every year since I have come out, my fear has nothing but grown. But so has my joy and will to live. This joy was built by people around me taking actions to make me feel safe and seen. It was real people, having a stake in a trans person’s life and doing a small deed to make it better.

It was not the corporations with the rainbow logos as lip service. It was not the empty sloganeering by politicians.

If you want to wish your trans/brown/queer/immigrant friend a “happy pride” this year, stop and ask yourself what exactly your role in their happiness is. And then do a bit more.

Ask them how they are.
Hold them as they cry.
Go on a walk with them.
Give them food.
Find them a job.
Give them housing.
Protect them at a public bathroom.
Help them move to a safer place.

Action matters. Even if we miraculously start winning back our rights, there will be a lot of work to do before we see any justice.

if you are not here

…then I don’t care.

If you don’t care about trans rights, I don’t care anymore. History will remember what you stood for in these genocidal times. It’s up to you to choose how you want to be remembered.

I am no longer hoping for things to get better. Or that someone somewhere will string some words together in just the right order to get you to magically change your mind. I’m just hoping to live this life a little longer.

I will not be in a protest, for reasons I have spoken about before.
I will protest by living my life.
I will make bad art.
I will make short films.
I will make loud music.
I will write poems.
I will make zines.
I will take silly little pictures.
I will pour love into my community.
I will create the evidence of my existence.

If I’m going to burn, I will burn in my own light.