Hey y'all, Zach Stafford here, and this week my sisters and I are taking the week off for the holidays

and we pre-recorded this episode you're about to hear. But sadly, when we made this episode, we could not have planned for what we all woke up to this past Sunday morning,

when news broke that five people were killed and 18 people were injured at Club Q in Colorado Springs.

I can speak for all of us here at Vibchek

and not only say that we are mourning our queer siblings,

but also say that this violence is a direct response

to the continued attacks being waged by the GOP and far right activists who do not see

LGBT people as people period.

We will be back next week and we'll be diving deeper into what happened in Colorado, what led to it and how we can all move forward.

But until then, we wanted to make sure you heard from us directly and knew that we love you.

We are here for you and we are fighting for you because you deserve to be here.

Now I'd like to invite my sister, Saeed, to share some words before we get on with our special

mailbag episode where we answer your questions.

I wrote this poem over a year ago. It's dedicated to the victims and survivors and the community of Pulse Night that here we are thinking again of victims, survivors and community,

in this case Colorado Springs and the club cue. This is for them.

Alive at the end of the world. The end of the world was a nightclub.

Drag queens with machetes and rhinestoneed machine

guns guarded the red and impassable door on Friday nights. Just to look at the crowd, all dressed up and swaying outside,

made people want to yell the truth about themselves to anyone who'd listen, but no one heard. The end of the world was loud.

The end of the world leaked music like radiation and we loved the neon echo even though it

taunted us or maybe because it taught even though it talked to us.

Or maybe because it talked to us. Kids, leaning out of windows hours after bedtime,

...