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By Quinn Hubbard
Quinn (they/them) writes poetry and creates art centered around queerness, spirituality, trauma, and much more! They are a nonbinary lesbian who is passionate about social justice initiatives like trans healthcare, abortion rights, prison abolition, and decolonization — to list a few. Although currently in college at UC Berkeley for a degree in Media Studies and a minor in Creative Writing, Quinn is originally from San Diego. Currently, they work as a virtual assistant for the company they started, Rose Design. After college, they hope to explore different mediums of storytelling.
being torn down reminds me of my great grandmother and how her house burned down, twice.
It reminds me of how she and her family made the trek to California decades before I was born
on the opposite side of the continent.
Sometimes I forget that I’m the latest of a long line of rootless people.
I get settled like a rock at the bottom of a river, being shuffled along with the current.
I should know by now to pack lighter, to live lighter, the rocks I collect doing nothing to root me
into the ground.
I yearn to be cradled, the way an asteroid makes impact, unmovable, permanent.
I’m never ready to leave and always the first to go, gifted with a strong flight instinct and a
midwest goodbye, ready to leave the conversation an hour before it ends.
I see the end and it scares me.
I should know by now that it’s all temporary, but I crave constancy like a touch-starved baby.
I get settled as though I have roots, but I’m a rock born rootless.
Or maybe I’m a piece of driftwood with the memory of roots embedded in past lives long gone, a
piece of driftwood that knew home and lost it before finding a new home and losing it
again
It reminds me of my grandparents house, the Santas that my grandfather gave away, you never
know when you see it for the last time until you’re halfway across the country.
It reminds me of the house in Illinois with the massive backyard.
We packed our dishes before our last meal, an early sign of a pattern to come, an inheritance.
It reminds me of my great grandma’s house by the lake, how nothing really changes in Indiana
except for what you had hoped would never change, her house remodeled.
She had a saying for a midwest card game, a dog in every town, every suite in hand, but I
guess we took it literally, naming our dogs after towns we once called home, Indi,
Indiana, Chester, Rochester.
And so I step forward with feet shaped by uprooted people, born with roots but forced to go
without.
