michael king

A letter to me at twenty years old. Before I tell you anything, let me tell you what I remember: It’s the summer of 2009, and you’re a few weeks away from moving back to Ball State for Sophomore year. Your first year there brought you its fair share of breakthroughs –– a runner was born, shedding weight and few old notions about being stuck, and you’ve only just begun etching a story that feels like your own. You savor these days, home in Brazil, Indiana. Running childhood roads, laughing with family, jumping into Grandma’s swimming pool.

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Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls jumped out to my eyes immediately, a book cover shining spectacularly among the Strand’s new releases. I cracked it open, sighing to myself a reminder of all the books waiting for me back home, and read a page at random. In it, the writer recalls the time her friend Clarissa helped her staple her skirt back together, reflecting on the strange rescue of friendship.

I bought it, and –– once I cracked it open –– I devoured it.

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The first time I laid eyes on Lesley Nneka Arimah’s collection of short stories, What it Means When a Man Falls From the Sky, I was at the Strand, and I was trying very hard not to buy any new books. Reading over the back cover –– a child fashioned out of hair, a world seemingly saved by a mathematical equation, an American teenager’s night out with her Nigerian cousin –– I almost failed in my mission. With my phone, I snapped a picture of the front cover, and I moved on.

Two weeks later, I learned What it Means had been chosen as the common read for FIT’s incoming first-year students. The moment copies appeared in our office, I grabbed mine and set to work reading it. Eight pages in, I was devastated. (Spoiler alert: The devastation did not stop there.)

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Red. It’s a warm night in Astoria, and we’re en route to a Korean chicken restaurant. For a Friday, the city feels a bit sleepy, lamplight pouring out of apartment windows, but we’re a walking commotion. Eight gay men, brought together only recently, already in the habit of greeting each other like family.

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On the best days, I find the light without trying.

My hands stay gentle all on their own, for myself and for others. Everybody around me is a rich tangle of humanity, a cocktail of hopes and fears and breaking and trying again, and I’m no exception. I’m ready to endeavor, and every direction strikes me as right, and stories unfurl themselves at my feet. I may not have everything figured out, but something beckons me to believe I’m well on my way.

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sunny day and i’m stealing glances of
you through rose-colored glasses,
winds billow around us, earth
stretches, makes way for hope in
green threads, everything coming to
life again for the sake of the living, but
none of it moreso than the tentative
stretching of the heart that’s
shed stitches

here in the wild city i
once believed a faraway dream, two
men who were once boys
quietly coaching their heartbeats to
want differently, at least to desire
behind bars,  here now
wanting, hoping, reaching,
breathing honest air, we
get to be here, now, in the
midst of everything

she is the surface of water, devoted
to stillness even in the
company of thunderclaps, she
is the way light and color
spill into each other, mesmerizing
cacophony of silence

she is the sound of
needle against vinyl, a half-second
before the music pours in, the
way we all hold our breath
before the melody rescues
the room

she is belief splashed
against the concrete slabs,
art for the sake of survival, love
burrowing its way through
cracks in the sidewalk,
hope defiant, the gentle
exhale of arriving
and unfurling