by Minna Nizam

They keep their friendship private

They don’t know how to hide it

Are they friends? Or is it simply a crush?

Will they ever reveal their friendship too much?

In what capacity is their friendship?

Love? Lust? Familiar? What does their friendship entail?

Forbidden to an extent

Yet the secret is there

Society’s standards of women loving women 

Are more accepting today, than in the past

If they choose to open their love,

They might be accepted

However, in order to understand the secrecy of their love

We must go back to the beginning

Stories of Victorian era roommates

Loving one another in secret 

Hiding the truth of their love 

Spinsters, they were called

Only friends, they were described

The truth of their love, would not be discovered

For ages to come

As new historians, document their queer identities

Moving back to the 21st Century

A new era of queer identity has born

Where the notion of sapphic love is not as hidden

However, the mystery still remains

Loey and Emma, the secret of their passion

Will it be revealed to the masses?

Or will they keep their secret hidden

Like their Victorian sisters of the past

Will their love be accepted?

Will they live together as spinsters did?

To what extent will their romance blossom?

From the 19th century to the 21st

Only time will tell

Yet their story reads, as their sisters from the past

A new birth of love and lust

Tied together in eternity  

In 2017, Minna Nizam graduated from Drew University with a degree in Art History and History, while minoring in Medieval Studies. Currently, Minna is a second year graduate student at Sarah Lawrence College. Minna studies Women’s History at Sarah Lawrence and plans to write a thesis about South Asian women’s voices in Victorian era Britain. Minna is also working on a fantasy series, titled United Kingdoms of Eslanda, and plans to be published by late 2021, or early 2022. Their biggest influences in the writing world are Neil Gaiman, J.R.R. Tolkien, and classic literature such as, Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales,and Gilgamesh. Minna enjoys alternative culture and recently interviewed for a zine called Weirdo Zine, a zine dedicatedto South Asian alternative creators. Minna has worked as a Museum Educator for several well known institutions including The Cloisters, the New York Transit Museum, and the Brooklyn Historical Society.  Minna lives with their cat, Lily Munster, in a whimsical little house called The Bat House (the house used to be infested with bats on the roof!) near a spooky little cemetery. Minna is a young trans South-Asian American creator and their pronouns are they/them.