we brought softness with us
pink sky, mesh shirt, keffiyeh on the straps. joy is not the absence of struggle. it’s what we carry through it.
holdings
we don't march for approval
bodies say what systems won't
we lay down because they can’t.
this was a die-in. healthcare workers, gathered in the middle of the city, bodies on the ground for gaza. we were there not just as clinicians, not just as queers, not just as people trained to care— but as witnesses to a system that pretends to be neutral while choosing a side. we already knew that silence wasn’t an accident. we’ve seen it before—in the wards, in the media, in the funding reports. but still, there’s something about laying your body down on cold ground that makes the grief feel sharper. and makes the refusal feel real.
my keffiyeh wasn’t a symbol. it was a practice. a reminder. a commitment to name genocide where others equivocate. to be present when presence costs something.
the pink triangle on my chest traced a line back to act up, to queer resistance in the face of state abandonment. but this wasn’t about metaphor. this was about gaza. about children buried under rubble. about medics killed in white coats. about naming what we know, and what our institutions refuse to say.
i didn’t speak. i didn’t need to. sometimes protest is not what you say but what you don’t move to stop.
#tiohtiàke #refusals #holdings #blackness #queerness #traces #surfaces
sous le cercle
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.
salt and recovery
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
something beyond
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
en suspens
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.
reading in the wake
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.
saying it anyway
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.
in my own words
kjipuktuk. winter sun. i spoke in french, and this time, it felt right.
not a defence. not a performance. just a moment of saying it like i meant it.