drift

they cross just as the light turns green. the street doesn't pause, but something in the air does.

#tiohtiàke #walks #surfaces #traces

accountability, laughter, cucumbers on the table. ballroom business, mid-afternoon.

#tiohtiàke #holdings #queerness #blackness #traces

i haven’t been back to italian class. not really a decision—more like a slow unthreading.

at first i missed one, then two. a message half-drafted. a reminder snoozed. now it’s just a tab i don’t open.

i think of them sometimes, conjugating without me. the schwa still soft in my mouth. still mine, even if unused.

there was no rupture. no reason. just me, always a little too tired, a little too elsewhere. it’s not shame. not quite guilt either. just the shape of absence when you let it stay.

i’ve left so many places like this. no goodbye, no explanation. not because it didn’t matter, but because it did—and i couldn’t hold it all.

the leaving isn’t loud. it’s slow. partial. unfinished. like language. like me.

#tiohtiàke #fragments #refusals #traces #drift

stood there teaching, not to perform, but to remember. to speak of what refuses extraction. to name what pulses under erasure. black keffiyeh against the chest, kiki futures on the screen. the room knew. not everything had to be said. some things shimmered between us.

#kjipuktuk #drift #blackness #queerness #refusals #fragments #holdings

we looked good. that’s it.

#tiohtiàke #queerness #holdings #fragments

the room knew what this one meant.

#tiohtiàke #queerness #holding #traces #walks

the conference ended. or maybe it didn’t. people lingered like the performance was still going. hallway laughter. cups half-full. a woman nodding too hard at nothing.

i had asked my question. black faces in every slide, but no data that spoke to us. just placement. just image.

the speaker deflected. clean. soft. the room let it happen.

i stepped outside. cold air, wet pavement, nothing sticking.

then he said it. ben énervé, hein? like anger was the problem. like clarity was a disruption. like i wasn’t still there.

i found him. calm. exact. you don’t get to narrate my presence.

he laughed. i didn’t.

i walked home with the cold in my hands. still here. still mine.

#tiohtiàke #refusals #holdings #traces

they look out like they won. the water doesn't care.

#lisboa #refusals #traces #surfaces #drift

capitalismo mata-nos.   not on a banner.   not in a book.   just a trash bin, tagged   on a side street in lisboa.

the message was already decaying,   paint dripping down like it knew   no one was coming to fix this.

i didn’t take it as warning.   i took it as witness.

sometimes the clearest truths   live where you’re not supposed to look.

#lisboa #drift #refusals #traces #blackness #fragments

naky held up a portrait like it was a mirror. virgínia quaresma— journalist, lesbian, afro-portuguese. forgotten by design. remembered anyway.

the tour wasn’t quiet. it moved. spoke back. refused the way history gets told without breath, without body.

the archive wasn’t in a museum. it was in his hands. in the cadence. in the way we stopped on cobblestones to make space for her name.

#lisboa #drift #blackness #fragments #traces #refusals