we stood still when the sun disappeared. a crowd without urgency. no one tried to name it.
the air changed first— cold, metallic, like something was watching. then the sky, folding into dusk as if the day had given up early.
i didn’t feel awe. not exactly. more like a shared breath held too long.
some people clapped when the light came back.
but most just stood there. under bare trees. on stolen land. watching a hole in the sky remind us how small we are.
after the burnout.
after the heart palpitations.
after the kind of anxiety that makes your body forget itself—
i left.
no email. no calendar. just this. water on my thighs. sun on my shoulder. a queer resort where no one needed me to explain why i came.
i didn’t heal. not fully. but i stopped bracing.
and for now, that’s enough.
#cayoguillermo #drift #holdings #surfaces #fragments #queerness
i looked up and didn’t try to name any of them.
no constellations. no directions. just stars— scattered, distant, alive.
i don’t always need meaning. sometimes it’s enough to know something else is out there.
something beyond what this world keeps asking me to carry.
#cayoguillermo #drift #fragments #traces #holdings #blackness
sometimes being above it all isn’t about distance. it’s about breath.
the snow kept everything quiet. even the city below. as if the cold had pressed pause.
i wasn’t looking for anything. just letting the light reflect off the ice and the railing hold my weight for a minute longer than usual.
a counter.
a cortado.
a book that doesn’t let you look away.
the sugar on the pastry barely held. like the light outside—thin, unsure.
i wasn’t reading to learn. not exactly. more like remembering with someone who already knew.
there are days when survival is this: coffee warm, pages open, grief in the margins.
the sun was generous. the grass didn’t mind. but the quiet felt too practiced.
i spoke because not speaking would have been a kind of surrender. not to correct. not to clarify. but to stay present, even when presence felt like exposure.
i wasn’t here for this. just passing through— a few hours between panels across town, a few steps off schedule.
but the building held something. not promise exactly. just presence. age without apology. history without invitation.
i looked up and thought: maybe.
spotted in a museum across the ocean. a totem pole far from the coast from which it came.
the plaque talked about artistry. not land. not theft. not how many hands it passed through before arriving here, under spotlights.
i didn’t read the full description. didn’t want to. the object already said more than the label ever could.
some things don’t lose power just because they’ve been displaced.
the symmetry felt like a question no one was answering.
no one else on the platform. just the hum of something approaching but not yet here.
sometimes the wait stretches longer than the journey. sometimes the quiet is what stays with you.
i sat and cried. not loudly. just enough to feel it leave my body a little at a time.
an older woman beside me was crying too. i passed her a tissue. we didn’t speak.
above us: the water fell, the light held. a circle that didn’t ask anything from us.
grief moved between strangers. not for explanation. not for closure. just to be felt together.
#washingtondc #drift #holdings #blackness #fragments #surfaces