Two feelings share a single sentence at the start of Bees's "Being", and the poem never lets either one win. "Being young and queer is... / As romantic / As it is upsetting." The ellipsis after "is" works like a held breath, as though the speaker is searching for the right word and finds that no single word will do. What follows is an attempt to say honestly what it feels like to be young and queer, without tidying it into a slogan of pride or a story of pain.
The poem is built as a balance. After the opening, it gives each feeling its own stanza, and the two mirror each other closely. "It feels romantic / To be who I am" is answered by "It feels upsetting / To be how I am." The shift from "who" to "how" is small but telling. "Who I am" is about identity, the self at its core. "How I am" sounds more like a condition or a state, something observed from outside. The speaker's inner life is cherished, while the way that life has to be lived is the source of the hurt. The repeated phrase "young and queer" also changes as it goes. In the first stanza it is "young and queer" and nothing more, but in the second it grows into "young and queer and deep in hiding", with the extra clause pulling the line downward.
The poem's one real image is the simile "Romantic like a rare gemstone in a ring." It is a flattering picture, since a gemstone is precious, beautiful and scarce, and it fits the speaker's claim to be "something unique / Something truly special." But the image is quietly double-edged. Gemstones are found underground, kept in boxes, and set in rings that someone else may admire. Judging by what follows, the comparison seems to carry its own shadow: what is valuable is also what is "kept hidden / To protect myself." The poem never says this outright, and the reader can feel the two stanzas pressing on each other anyway.
The word "something" does a similar job. In the first stanza the speaker is "something unique", and in the second "something that must be kept hidden." The vagueness of the word turns the speaker into an object, first a treasure and then a secret. The same word is praise in one place and burden in the other, which shows how closely the two feelings are tied together. A reader might also notice how "hiding" and "hidden" echo across a few lines. There is no rhyme anywhere in the poem, and this repetition takes its place, drumming one idea into the ear.
The form is free verse, with short, plain lines that begin each time with a capital letter and read almost like speech. The language is simple on purpose. There are no elaborate metaphors beyond the ring, and the directness makes the poem feel like a confidence rather than a performance. The short lines also give the poem a halting rhythm, with pauses where a longer line would rush on. The comma after "There is a struggle," leads into the loneliest line of the poem: "One which really only I can understand." The words "really only" are doing a lot. They suggest that explaining this feeling to others has already been tried, or at least imagined, and has fallen short.
The ending is the most interesting choice. The poem closes on "It is strange being young and queer / It is strange being." The last line sheds its labels and has no full stop. The word "being" also returns us to the title, so the poem finishes where it began. The reading I find most convincing is that the strangeness reaches past identity to existence itself. Hiding and being special both make the speaker feel apart from ordinary life, and the unfinished sentence leaves that feeling hanging, unresolved.
That refusal to resolve is what gives the poem its value. It doesn't promise that the hiding will end, and it doesn't claim the speaker is only a victim. A reader in the same position might find it a relief to see "romantic" and "upsetting" sitting side by side without apology. Other readers may find it a clear, compact account of how one life can hold pride and fear at once.