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.
steel and glass above me.
heat on the thighs.
watermelon trunks,
black towers,
a view that costs too much.
but i’m here anyway.
resting in the contradiction.
#tiohtiàke #drift #surfaces #blackness #fragments #holdings #refusals
intermission. outside the ball. boots up. talk moving. nothing profound. just enough to reset before stepping back in.
#tiohtiàke #drift #blackness #queerness #holdings #fragments
me and mother phoenix. mid-show, mid-shift, but nothing uncertain.
the name had already settled. this was the exhale. not just a mother— my friend, my people, my kin.
some moments don’t need a mic. just light, sweat, knowing.
#tiohtiàke #drift #holdings #blackness #queerness #fragments #refusals
for one of my best ones.
the candles held.
so did we.
strawberries, sugar, a whole lot of light.
not a performance of joy— the real thing. held in the breath, shared in the room.
this is how we stay.
#tiohtiàke #drift #holdings #queerness #blackness #fragments #refusals
a march of mourning. they carry the names in cloth, the weight of what has been done. downtown tries to pretend it’s still normal. but we are past normal. this is not protest. this is a procession for the dead.
l’art existe. tucked between brutalist lines and fluorescent shadows. not a declaration— a reminder. of what survives the structure. of what glows anyway. even in institutions. especially in ruins.
#tiohtiàke #drift #traces #surfaces #refusals #fragments #holdings
on the way to a house practice.
air heavy with smoke, with memory, with movement.
we laughed anyway. pointed. posed.
played around with a new category—something shifted. not just in the body. in the breath. family feels like that sometimes: silly and sacred at once.
walked here with oriol.
afternoon sun too bright to ignore.
the sign said bonjour like it meant something,
but i was already thinking about leaving.
met with malica this week— potential postdoc supervisor at beniba. submitted the queen’s predoc application too. if it all goes through, this might be my last summer here.
the city looked soft in the light— like it didn’t know i was saying goodbye.
drift doesn’t ask for arrival. just movement. just the soft ache of being somewhere you already know how to leave.