Joy Comes in the Morning: Finding Sanctuary in the Wake of Pulse

Describe a morning you woke without fear.

– Bhanu Khapil, The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers

One morning last June, six days after the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, I woke up in the bed I made for myself. I did not wake up afraid, or in the bed another woman made for me. It was not the bed my mother or my grandmother or my father would have wanted for me. But it was mine. It was messy. Pillows and clothes were strewn on the floor of the apartment. There were dirty dishes in the sink. I was, by choice, alone. I stayed up late the night before writing, thinking about life and love and grief, my mind unable to stop circling back to the faces of the people who died at Pulse, the Florida nightclub where a gunman opened fire on a dance floor. That morning, before I remembered that there were forces and people that want me dead or silent, I woke without fear.

On Sunday, June 12, 2016, while those gathered at Pulse danced without knowing how the night would end for them, I was dancing too. My friends and I were out at a mostly straight club in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, having an epic New York City day that began with brunch and ended with the next morning’s sunrise but did not include sleep. Our night went a million ways but never truly toward danger. I was briefly separated from my friends, by myself on the outdoor patio. I smoked three cigarettes back-to-back, tried to tamp down a restlessness that had been whirling inside me for months. For a moment, alone among strangers, I felt unsafe. But when I looked around at the crowd assembled, a gaggle of Brooklyn beauties, I knew I would be all right. I’d come out for air because inside was thick with cologne, perfume, and sweat, the collective release of an entire week of worry. As the first shots were fired at Pulse, I was considering which mix I liked better—the Afrobeat one with Fela and Wunmi or the one where a house beat dropped over the speakers and the dancers slapped shekeres and tambourines along in time. As the folks at Pulse dove for cover and sent their last goodbyes to their beloved, I was texting a lover good night and telling her I loved her. I was celebrating the birthday of a friend visiting from Philly. We were excited to have our arms and legs exposed to the summer heat. I remember it was hot.

Never in my wildest imaginings did I think that a night that began with music could end in death. I’d had so many nights out like this one, but none of them ended tragically. But writers know that our work is to plumb the depths of imagination, to go past what we know already, what we feel comfortable knowing, to find words for that which we have yet to name. Because as much as we will try to make sense of what has been done, there is no rightful name for massacre, no balm for grieving the young and the old and the innocent.

Photographs by SHAWN THEODORE

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The summer of 1999, when I was not yet nineteen years old, was the summer of my first everything—the first time I kissed a girl, my first cigarette, the first time I thought that I could be a writer. I remember reading an article by young-adult author Jacqueline Woodson in Essence magazine in which Woodson compares her experience pledging Alpha Kappa Alpha to coming out as a lesbian: “Neither pledging nor coming out was easy.” A chance meeting with Woodson first on the page and then in person opened up a path that was previously closed to me, one where I could be who I was—a black lesbian from a working-class Brooklyn family—and also write and travel and live...