As Baltimore commemorates the 50th anniversary of Pride, and in the spirit of the enduring declaration “We Will Not Be Erased,” Baltimore Beat is honored to dedicate this Pride issue to the diverse experiences and perspectives of our city’s vibrant LGBTQIA+ community.
We invited our readers to share their reflections, stories, art, and insights on what Pride means to them this year. Here are some of the pieces we received.
Abby Higgs
Growing up, my family attended First Baptist Church in Richmond, Indiana — brick chapel, hellfire at nine and eleven. The minister, Reverend Moore, was a squat, silver-haired man with horn-rimmed glasses. He hated homosexuals – so much that when he wasn’t decrying “the gay agenda” from the pulpit, he was doing so via megaphone on street corners in his spare time. It was fun for him, I assumed; he clearly loved it. Which meant he hated me. Not that Rev. Moore ever looked in my direction at church – never spared me a glance – but his words settled into me when he preached like dust in the lungs, steadily making it harder for me to breathe in that otherwise calm — too calm — chapel. Eventually, I stopped going altogether.
Until I met another Reverend Moore nearly two decades later. At the Unitarian Church on West Franklin during Baltimore Pride. I’d stopped in to use the restroom, glitter clinging to my sweat-slick arms and legs. “Make sure you’re drinking enough water,” said a voice from the depths of the darkened sanctuary. A middle-aged, silver-haired man stepped into the light, smiling. He wore a nametag on his bright-green shirt — “Reverend Moore” — and carried a megaphone in one hand. “Gotta go tell God’s children how beautiful they are today,” he said, handing me a bottle of water. Then he walked out the front door of the church to the sidewalk, lifted his megaphone, and shouted at everybody and nobody nearby: “I love you and God loves you just the way you are!”
Kenneth Watson, Jr. JD
Growing up, I always felt different — though I didn’t yet have the words for it. My father would watch me, saying, “Look how big your eyes get when you’re paying attention.” And I was always paying attention — to the small shifts, the sideways glances, the words that said I was “sweet” but meant something else. My stutter felt like the fear in my chest, a silence I learned to carry.
Even in a house full of siblings, I felt like an island. I learned to make myself small, to quiet the parts of me that didn’t fit — because back then, safety meant not being seen.
But with time, I learned that those quiet parts of me — the parts I was told to tuck away — are the very pieces that make me whole. My queerness isn’t something to be hidden; it’s the truth of my being. It’s the light that refused to be snuffed out.
My birthday falls at the start of Pride Month, as if the universe itself was saying: you belong here. Today, I live as both that young boy and his protector — honoring his innocence, his grace, his unbroken spirit.
To any little Black boy who feels alone: you are not. You are seen, you are whole, and you are no less of a man because of who you love or who makes you feel safe. Your story matters—and it will not be erased.
Coraline Ismael Karim
From Oranges to Crabs
I moved here from the Sunshine State, from Tampa, a city for tech bros and tax-evading philanthropists, the haven of gentrifiers, if you will, where white and cis faces filled practically every space one enters, and growing up there as a Muslim trans woman taught me the essence of isolation. It was a very rare occurrence to see someone like me, if at all. At times, I felt like I had to dig through concrete with my bare hands just to even see a brown-skinned transgender woman.
And then I moved to Baltimore in January of 2025. I left that place I once called home out of fear of being beaten and removed from society, losing my autonomy in all spaces, once again, because calling me every derivative that their small minds can think of became appropriate once again.
The isolation that clung to my neck for so many years began to wither when I came here. Just down the street from home there’s a Yemeni restaurant full of Muslim faces making the best falafel and not once have they made me feel unwelcomed. They play the same Muslim prayers I grew up with and treat me like I’m their family, like habibti. There are black and brown trans faces everywhere here, and the separation of the self I once felt for twenty-five years of my life is now a passing memory. I am home. That’s what Pride is. It isn’t booths from corporations pretending they ever cared about us or another oil company acting like flaring a rainbow means they want to see my tribe in their spaces — no. Pride is about seeing your people out in public. It’s about laughing with those who call you their own. It’s about home.
Fern Aurelius
My works are homunculi; created from the anguish of expression and the decaying bibliosmia of my collage hoard, bound with non-toxic glue, and a few drops of my own blood. I’ve formed them to provoke the minds of all who view them.
Art is never only about the artist. My pieces are reflections of the niche that I occupy in this world: a tender, complicated space I share with a loving, vibrant, and resilient community.
Rahne Alexander
Pride is a place in time. It’s an emotion; it’s a sin. It’s a bunch of lions; it’s a fucking riot. It’s summer day, as it goeth before the fall. But the feeling, the swelling, that elusive warmth that escapes and perplexes me? The Pride of memes and commodity? Look, I love a quippy racerback as much as the next femme but even the best tanks fade. I have had my share of Prides where I’m too debauched or detached to focus on the fight immediately ahead of me. We all can’t possibly be always already on. We need our beauty sleep. We need to dream. We need to watch out for each other. Without that, there is no Pride.
Dani Lopez
This series was made as an ode to my older sibling Pili Lopez and his career practice as a Queer, Colombian tattoo artist at a local queer-owned Baltimore tattoo shop called Fruit Camp. We are both Queer Colombian artists living and working in Baltimore.
Some of my favorite memories from the previous 2024 Pride celebration were photographing Pili’s partner Santana Sankofa, my sister-in-law, performing at Baltimore Trans Pride. Seeing everyone dance and sing to songs from a loved one was healing. I am looking forward to taking photos at this year’s pride to document the abundance Queer joy in the city.
My-Azia Johnson
Sweating like a Whore at Church (Excerpt 1)
Our story followed the stars, charted by our placements which naturally brought us into this world dirty, wet, and fiery, predestined to leave us winded from committing the most unholy of acts. I’m watching you paint a self portrait, layering colors of depth and dimension.
Together, we frequently craft our own beauty, sitting intertwined with silence and gratitude, we let each other in, rooting into deeper and deeper depths of enlightenment. The memories from last night, such a blessing. Then you interrupt my daylusting and encourage me to do more than just admire your secret project. I’ve been chosen to gently touch the sprouts and burrow through the dirt of your greenhouse that’s still mucky in thick, fleshy bands of fresh paint. My soul is resurrected with each chance I get to feel you wet and undone like this. Access to any part of you feels spiritual and sacred.
I always ask what your artistic intent is when you display your work to me. We guide each other to feel where the spirit is moving, and our chapel-worthy artistry fogs out every single thought and window of doubt. We sometimes luxuriously take turns stroking paint-covered brushes made of silicone or bone, other times we’re inspired to move more hastily. I see your hand, and I’m becoming a fanatic for your craft. From above, our bodies present as undulating lines in different shades of brown, embossed with cotton pillows and cold sheets christened with sweat. Art possessed with breath and death.
Everett Patterson
Yasmine Bolden
Baltimore Pride Abcederian
An ancestry of belonging to anyone but ourselves ends here.
Bends beneath my binder and swells into a syncopated
call and response that begins: all Black trans survival is improvizational jazz. Nearly
dies on my lips while I’m singing with sapphics
entering the Pink Pony Club. Is made a deer in headlights by
faces that can Anansi spider, sliding between boy
girl boy girl. Whatever we do, we know we
have to remember everything. We could be tipsy
indolent after sad twerking to Southern hip-hop or
joaning in a way that’s code for: I love you pink-soft and red-hot. Several
Konas and bisexual cocktails in, we’d still
look for the wide-eyed form of our
most hurting histories. Bless the homegirl whose purse pockets
naloxone, water, and grandma candies. Who
opens her palms, taking her
place on the right hand side of the road, waiting. Who takes being the
queer salt of the earth seriously. Whose
rage could rival God’s. Whose pride holds my
sweaty hand in the hospital where I misgender myself, at
the parade where everyone knows and
understands both of my names: the one I was given and the one I wasn’t allowed to have. Voracious is the only word to describe the
way my ancestors must’ve felt. I know it from the way I’ve got to be capital
X xtra as soon as May and June kiss again.
You can feel a hunger that ripples through my lineage. A
zest wild and horned and all our own.
Glori Mahammitt
Matt Hurd
Pride is finally feeling like you can be yourself after masking a significant part of who you are for a long time. It is a destination that I wasn’t sure I would make it to, honestly. There is often a gap between when you “know” and when you “come out” (for the first time – because I’ve learned it is continuous), and that period of discontent* can be hard. I am just grateful to be here now. Moving to Baltimore and finding the community here was the best thing to ever happen to me.
I love you, Baltimore 💚
Barbara Perez Marquez
TACITURN
crawled into bed last night
your paced breathing a metronome
my heartbeat attempting to match it
lull myself into unconscious bliss
sleep eludes me and I turn
my hand finds your warm skin
your body existing in stasis
mine grasping at sleep like mist
the night goes on without me
moonlight shows me your silhouette
tracing it to memorize it
mind flooding with images of you
tasting our first kiss
insatiably wanting to domesticate
our bleeding hearts
urgently searching for home
John Graff
Thomas Alice Woronowicz
Peel
I want
The moon’s
Mouth
Inside my
Mouth
My Bodily
Confessions
Blue fucked
Up bangs
I have found myself
Some circular
Accident
The truth
Lies further
From it
Always half
Something
But
Round
Peach
It’s love that’s
The reason I care
What my hair
Looks like
When
I am
Alone
I want to be
My own rock-
Star
Removing
Just enough
To show