worried.

A piece of found plywood, rough at the edges, its layers pressed together under immense force. In the corner, a single word scrawled in Sharpie: worried. A whisper, a warning, a relic of a time when fear settled into our bones.

Created during the COVID-19 lockdown, in the shadow of Trump’s presidency and amidst the uncertainty of Pride, worried. speaks to the fragility of queer existence under political siege. It captures a moment when community, already threatened by erasure, was further fractured by isolation. Like plywood—an engineered material composed of thin, vulnerable sheets bound together for strength—queer resilience is layered, held together by shared histories, struggles, and acts of defiance.

The mark on this found surface is both intimate and universal. It is a trace of the past and a reminder of an ongoing reality: the pressure to conform, the threat of being stripped away, the necessity of holding together. Yet, like plywood, queerness endures—not in spite of its construction, but because of it.