President Donald Trump reached new levels of Truth Social shit-posting in the early days of April. On Easter Sunday, he delivered an expletive-laden tirade unbecoming of a president and escalated on Tuesday to a genocidal threat on the Iranian people. He Truthed that if the Strait of Hormuz was not opened by nightfall, “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
It is increasingly hard to continue “life as normal” during a fascist takeover of our “civilized society” — but let me tell you a story of hope.
The weekend before my X feed was filled with these threats of foreign bloodshed, my parents visited Boston. They flew in on Good Friday — which felt anything but — and our first stop was a cup of coffee and a walk through the Common on Boston’s first day of post-snow mildness.
We stopped to drink our chai, latte, and hot chocolate by “The Embrace,” a sculpture depicting the intertwined arms of civil rights activists Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King as a nod to love, which motivated their nonviolent protests. My parents and I traded stories of our different lives — Boston for me, Shreveport, La. for them — while a dog’s birthday party took place nearby.
Somewhere between the updates, the coffee, and the dogs, two men approached me, cell phone extended, asking if I could take their picture. They stood beneath the Kings’ larger-than-life embrace, anxiously shifting and looking around, finally landing on a pose that indicated they were a couple.
What started as me taking a few pictures quickly became me filming their engagement; one of the men gave me a nervous glance and got down on one knee, ring shining in the April sun. I’ve never witnessed a proposal before, let alone been the videographer, but their queer joy was contagious.
The two freshly-engaged strangers had no one else to share their excitement with, so they hugged me. I returned the phone, which now held their precious photos and videos of this moment. They walked away, arm in arm, to the rest of their life.
And then it was just me — and my parents, and the coffees — at the statue. I swear it shone brighter after serving as the backdrop for their proposal. The birds were chirping, Nick Shea was drawing $1 portraits, and a happy couple was engaged. Boston spring was finally here.
It felt like a scene from a movie long before 2026. It’s hard to believe this snapshot happened less than a week ago, and not years ago. The entire tableau felt like watching my first lesbian relationship, circa 2021: the nervousness of not knowing if it’s safe to hold hands or kiss my girlfriend in public, constantly surveying my surroundings and walking briskly, head down.
Whether it’s two high schoolers in Louisiana in 2021, or a couple in Boston in 2026, queer people undoubtedly know this fear — the fear of being seen. Black people have known this fear since the founding of this country and before; Muslim Americans are feeling it, especially with increased calls for bans on immigration from Muslim countries. Immigrant students and families across the U.S. have lived in fear this past year, as ICE detentions increased by upwards of 75%.
Trump ultimately backed down on his threats Tuesday, an hour and a half before he would’ve launched massive strikes on Iranian infrastructure and lives. The U.S. and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire to continue negotiating a peace agreement, which remains intact, despite the U.S. reportedly violating three of the 10 parts.
But this is a story of hope. A couple is engaged in Boston, and I got to be a part of it. The sun was shining and there was no snow on the ground. Joy is resistance, and we need a lot of both right now.
