What if tomorrow we had a picnic? We will bring fig jam, focaccia, strawberries, kettle corn, creamy brie, crackers with rosemary and salt. We will hold hands with our partners. We will remember umbrellas for the eventual sun shower. We will lay down blankets, and not just the classic red and white checkered ones. We will remember other patterns like nautical navy blue stripes and purple tie-dye. We will reach into the sky and borrow clouds as cushions.

Our picnic will be out in the open. An ocean-sized meadow to hold all the world’s queerness, with ample room to share with cottontails and bluebirds, with ants and bumblebees. Did you know ants outnumber humans 2.5 million to 1? Did you know you won’t have to hide anymore? Both the honey and the honeybee for us, we will say.

Tomorrow, all the bigots will evaporate, all the churches will crumble. All the stations spewing lies and hate will bloom whale songs and the shhh of saltspray. All the cops will fall dead at our feet. Dawn’s arrival will guarantee them gone, never to return. And we will stay. For as long as we like. 

As for anyone neither here nor there, anyone still of bones and muscles (the heart being the most important one) but perhaps lacking in courage…People who do not shout but whisper. People who do not hit but glare. People who know our first names but prefer to carry on, ignoring us, even after asking who we are. Brothers and teachers and mothers and commuters who always take the same bus as us and neighbors and our children’s friends’ parents and coaches and doctors. 

But what if tomorrow we didn’t worry? Their tongues and lips will be out of earshot at the picnic anyway.

Tomorrow we will all be poets since we already are. We will write on scraps of loose leaf with stubs of charcoal, and on each other’s forearms with our index fingers. We will write by singing—the breeze will cradle our words and carry the sounds until they find violets, twirling around petals of lavender and hyacinth, too. We will gather green carnations and daisies using our memories instead of our fists. We will gift them to our crushes and lovers and partners by recalling their details—every texture, color, shape, and smell—often looking to our own bodies to illustrate our meaning.

Someone will remember us, we will say, even in another time. And how lucky we’ll be to know more is waiting. Starting tomorrow, we will rest.

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Notes: “Both the honey and the honeybee for us” is adapted from Sappho’s Fragment 107, and “Someone will remember us, we will say, even in another time” is adapted from Sappho’s Fragment 147. “All the cops will fall dead at our feet” is borrowed from Ally Ang’s poem, “On Being Asked, ‘What Is Your Dream Job?’”

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Livia Meneghin (she/her) is the author of Honey in My Hair and a review writer for GASHER. She won Breakwater Review's 2022 Peseroff Prize, and is a Writers' Room of Boston Fellow. She earned her MFA at Emerson College, where she now teaches writing and literature. She is a cancer survivor.