a living record of black queer drift, held in fragments, traces, and quiet refusals across cities, surfaces, and days.
light catching on ledges before it settles
stone holds it then lets it go
glass refuses the gesture, keeps everything moving
a figure caught in the wall, holding what arrives unchanged
below, the street moves through it slowly
as if nothing here is meant to stay— and still something does
a worker stepped outside and the building gave him up for the length of a cigarette.
smoke lifted, thin enough to pass inspection.
i sat across the way, waiting, where nothing was required of me.
the door closed and kept its number.
someone walked through the place the smoke marked.
the street resumed without remembering us.
i moved how the land moved low light over burnt slopes a single trunk split open but still standing
the ocean didn’t ask for me but it didn’t leave the train curved and my breath caught up
my chest found space the seat held my weight the hum matched the rhythm i didn’t know i was waiting for
i followed what stayed what didn’t flinch what made room without asking me to fold
ease came in through the ribs like memory like a name i used to know
not escape not softness just the truth of a body finally unbraced
i met myself in the quiet before the next turn
i came west to ask if this ocean could hold me
i sat still long enough to listen
it didn’t lie— but it didn’t reach me
no pull in the sternum no names in the salt
not the same ghosts not the same grief
this water has memory but not of me
still, i bowed
not every wave needs to carry me back
the inner sea stirs fascia tightening like a net drawn in
heat crawls the spine a pulse flickering under bone as if old tension has started turning again
our seabed shifts silt rising as if remembering hands that once shook it loose
today draws itself close a seam pulling inward breath catching in the hollow of the ribs
far out a depth changes shape quietly the way pressure does before anyone claims to feel it
salt gathers at the tongue arriving early the whole body listening for whatever moves next
I believe the ocean remembers more than the archives do. I believe its remembering is a kind of justice that cannot be erased, rolling forward in salt that stings and cleans in the same breath, reminding us that healing and reckoning move in the same tide.
I believe every wave is a witness, that the water keeps count of every name that was taken. I believe the wind still carries their syllables inland, pressing them into our mouths each time we speak of freedom.
I believe I come from those who crossed unwilling and still crossed— from the ones who refused to vanish the way history required, from the ones who turned rope into rhythm, hunger into song. I believe their music still hums in the undertow when I am tired.
I believe forgetting is not survival; it is surrender. And I believe survival without memory is no survival at all, because I’ve seen comfort scab over a wound and dare to call itself healing while the bleeding goes on.
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I believe the Atlantic is not a border but a sentence unfinished, its subject and verb still searching beneath the foam. I was born to finish that sentence with my own mouth— to make language out of water, and vow out of breath.
The sea does not forgive. And that’s all right. Forgiveness was never asked for. What the dead wanted was this: that we tell the truth with the same force that tried to silence it. I know the body keeps the weather of its ancestors, that salt settles in the bones like a vow. When the wind cuts through my coat, it’s only reminding me whose work I belong to.
I’m standing where the tide knows my name without needing my voice to say it. That kind of knowing— it’s the closest thing I’ve found to mercy.
If I forget, salt my mouth until the truth burns clean again. If I falter, harden the ground so I remember what I stand on. If I shrink, widen the horizon until fear has no corner left to hide. If I go silent, let the horn in the fog call me back to the living.
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This is the work: to remember, to make, to return— to carry others with me. To call the tide by its real name when I can hear it, and teach my breath to move in time with the sea.
We were never cargo. We were chorus. Still are. Still singing.
The song is the bridge. The bridge is the future.
The ocean is not blue. It is work. And the work is love in its hardest, truest form— a love that lifts, that names, that refuses to forget.
Because of this, I will not look away. I will not mistake rest for freedom. I will not mistake quiet for peace.
I will return to the water until the water returns to me. I will keep my hands open to the wind. I will speak, even when my voice is salt.
I will remember. And I will build.
the inbox blooms while the death toll updates. i double-click silence. i open the portal, and brace for impact. someone is grieving a breakup. someone wants to disappear. i say mm-hmm, say yes, say tell me more. i do not say: the world is burning.
i scroll before sessions just to confirm that the grief is still real. it always is. congo, sudan, gaza flicker behind the scheduler. the platform asks: would you like to send a reminder?
i write: client was tearful, grounded in the session, able to reflect. i do not write: my chest is a locked file. my jaw clicks from clenching the names i cannot say aloud. the session ends. i bill.
my tea goes cold between autoplays. the footage plays muted, but i can hear it anyway. a child’s name trends— not for surviving. i check for land acknowledgements and evacuation orders in the same breath.
i do not scream. i do not post. i do not sob between sessions. i eat lunch like i’m supposed to. it tastes like anesthesia.
a client thanks me for holding space. i want to say: the space is breaking.
i am splintered between the rubble and the rubric, between my ethics and the endless wars. between holding the line and losing it completely.
i google how to stay human and close the tab. i light a candle and forget what it’s for. i try to write a post and delete the words: this is not okay.
but i say thank you. i say take care.
i write another note. i name the hour. i call it progress.
you pulled me back in before i’d even stood all the way up hand in my hair mouth still wet your breath catching like you were trying to apologize with your hips
i didn’t say a word just slid down again let my knees hit the floor didn’t care if it hurt— not when your thighs were already shaking
you tasted like skin and sweat like the first tear into a mango’s flesh juice running before i could swallow and when you moaned— low, throat-closed, helpless— i knew you’d let me ruin you again
after we stayed still your breath warm against my cheek hands heavy on my shoulders before you kissed my fingers one by one like they were the ones that had started it
the bass hit and my body answered.
not for them. not for the judges.
for the boy who ran. for the silence that stayed. for the part of me that never left the floor.
i looked up. the room cracked open. they saw it.
i was exactly where i needed to be.
#tiohtiàke #drift #fragments #holdings #queerness #blackness #refusals
held not as artefact but as muscle memory. a grip woven not to preserve— to insist.
this is not a still life. it is breath, folded. it is the echo of a sip carried across generations like a promise not yet emptied.
not display, but devotion. not history, but heat.