What I’d Say to Little Xavi & Joy Without Shame

WHAT I’D SAY TO LITTLE XAVI

in response to RuPaul

When Mama Ru asks,
“What would you say to little Xavi?”
I don’t flinch.
I close my eyes
and see you—
small, soft,
staring out a gated window in Bushwick,
already knowing too much,
already carrying too much.
So I say this.

You don’t know me yet,
but I am who you become—
after the bruises fade
and the breath returns
like a stray cat you feed anyway.

I wish I could go back
to that night in the Coney Island apartment,
your body stiff with secrets,
when that motherfucker turned you
into a silence you never asked to keep.

That night, you stopped being a child
and became a survivor.
And even then—bendito—you glowed.

You came out with trembling lips,
truth sharp as glass.
She called it a sin.
You believed her.
And the world collapsed inward.

You swallowed more than pills—
you swallowed the belief
that you didn’t deserve to live.

But the universe,
in all its twisted mercy,
kept you here.

Mami didn’t say te amo or lo siento.
Just said vete de mi casa
a week later—
like queerness was a crime,
and your survival, an inconvenience.

You left anyway.
Sixteen.
No map, no mercy, no mattress.

You slept on benches,
blew strangers
for food
and the illusion of mattering.

Yes, you were a puta.
But you kept your name.

The piers became your sanctuary.
The girls in drag, your saints.
Willi taught you how to walk
like the wind owed you money.

Ballroom gave you a house
when bloodlines gave you locks.

There will be poems.
Books.
Stages that quake beneath your heels.

But first—
a group of teens with fists full of fury
will beat you into a headline.
They will say faggot
before your ear shatters
into a prayer you never meant to pray.

And when they try to cancel you—
your own comunidad
calling you traitor, problematic, passé—
remember who you are.

You survived not just the streets,
but the church,
the critics,
the well-meaning poets
who couldn’t say Latinx
without choking on the accent.

And love—sí, love—
will find you at a bar called The Monster,
wrapped in a Rolling Stones tee
and a rage you recognize.

He’ll say yes
when you almost didn’t.
He’ll kiss you
like your scars are sacred.

You’ll stand before your mother again,
wearing a brown suit
and the ache of everything unspoken.

She won’t accept you—
but she’ll show up.

Mijo,
you are not
what was done to you.
You are what you kept alive.

With pride, glitter, and sin,
the man you bled for
and finally became.

Shantay, I stay!

JOY WITHOUT SHAME

I never imagined love could feel like this—
your laughter, contagious after so much rain.
We weren’t meant to survive, pero mira—
we smile anyway, in daylight, without shame.

Queer was a wound. Now it’s a spell
we cast with every fearless step forward.
For those who never made it—
their names etched into our skin.

I carry them on my tongue,
like rosaries I once gagged on.
Today, I spit pearls,
let them fall like confetti.