For the past eight months, I have felt your edges around the word “brace” countless times. A meniscus tear, another ACL repair. You, braced knee, stupid knee, healing knee.
 
So we reimagine the context of the word. Something to brace ourselves up with. A brace – the two of us. Embrace, your arms a fathom, the sea brackish and braced against the spray. A brace of us – bracing against the Senate race for ridicule in History’s future, arms of preparation in a warlike manner. As we bind or tie two lifelines to a place or position for resisting pressure; as we hold firmly; as we prepare to hold in such a position or manner as to give firmness, structure, presence, preservation, storied bodies to withstand opposition and oppression.
 
Jaws which draw tight, to brace the nerves: a bow, a drum, an angle in the corners. To encircle the loan or favor,  to sew over the first and last stitches, to linger over with delight (a buttonhole) going back and forth two or three times – or, your tongue traced over all places of me,  everytime you come into my bed, braced for pleasure. 
 
For tone or vigor, to rouse energy – for courage and the power of endurance.
Brace sharp, brace up to keep this relation-ship afloat in the wind, the boat adjusting and evolving to the weather of political mood, a flimsy fling of egomania ballast. Braced to anchor, for the chain-thud, pulled to your shifting shore, of my shifting body, erect and penetrable. In the mouth of this shaft you, looking for a rough cut pearl.
 
And then there is music: holding together two or more staves indicating simultaneously to play both parts. And we do, and we do, and we do. Channeling both give and take, yin and yang. A harmonious balance.
 
I have been propped up by your love; our dyad a bracket of creatures, a culture of curiosity. To truss together past survival mechanics, and galvanize our steel nerves to hold the center. And not only to hold, but to heal, and sing while staying afloat as we sew the rent in the world’s embrace, and fathom a new grounding to stand on, a brace of genderqueers, a flair of fluidity and resurgence, a brace of gays.