Held: Black Queer Intimacies in a Time of Risk

This essay reflects on the navigation of Black queer intimacy during the COVID-19 lockdown, a time marked by heightened vulnerability, isolation, and fear. It examines how desire and connection were negotiated within the confines of a public health crisis that cast touch and shared breath as dangerous. Through personal narrative, I explore how Black queer men carve out space for tenderness and care amid conditions of systemic neglect. I consider how intimacy becomes a way to reimagine safety and belonging. Ultimately, this essay offers a meditation on the potential and precarity of connection in times of crisis, and how Black queer intimacy can serve as a stabilizing force in even the most uncertain conditions.