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To all my sistas and brothers with dyed afros multicolor braids septum piercings: this one’s for you. shuffling through old Aaliyah jams with anthems of white teenage suburban angst it blares through your headphones screaming “HONEY , THIS IPOD ISN’T BIG ENOUGH FOR THE BOTH OF US.” To all the boys I’ve seen in Suncoast and Hot Topic, roaming the hallowed halls of the mall searching for one last Naruto dvd and trippin’ in their TrippNYC© bondage pants: Dudes, may the only chains that bind you be connected to your flame-decal wallets. To my ladies drawing hearts over the faces of Kurt Cobain, Morrissey, Orlando Bloom in that bomb ass blonde lacefront, reciting stanzas of love and devotion like Daria in springtime: “roses are red, violets are blue, if this room were set on fire, I’d, umm…think twice about leaving you.” Here’s to the beautiful brown kids with dumbbells in their face and holes in their ears; who are heterotrans*cisgender and queer; ladies with armpit hair as kinky as the curls on her head; gentlemen who know that punk rock isn’t dead—it’s in us! A Harlem renaissance in our tongues, in our bodies— here’s to the kids who were Growing Up Goth-y. Shout out to my homies: Kravitz and Hendrix, Badu and Monae, to the Roots, Bloc Party, and Lisa Bonet, to Langston and Baker and Mos Def and Willow, to Iman, Gambino, Hurston and Cee-Lo to Lady Angelou, George Clinton, RuPaul, we are the awkward black grrls/the Chuck Berry’s of today. May the wings of dead activists come take you away; may the beats of dead rock stars make you wanna sway; may the ink of dead poets stain your arms with their kiss. If society forgets you, honey, remember this: It’s our voice that ring in the strings of electric guitars guiding minds with our thoughts as if they were stars we are more than our music our sports and our cars we are the 1%, baby: we are who we are so Goth we were born black lipstick and combat boots and Grace Jones, we are Nina Simone we are everything we’ve never known and yet wanted to be. here’s to the kids you never see on TV: to my girls with no asses, round brothers wearing glasses: this is not just a phase.