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
they call it wisdom but it reads like distance.
pages upon pages to say: perhaps you are real but not yet certain. perhaps you belong but only if it doesn’t make others uncomfortable.
they write of tension like it’s an external thing. they measure discomfort but not whose it is.
they gather everything but us.
no affected voice in the room, no hand in the margins, no breath in the footnotes.
somewhere, a child tries to speak and finds their name missing from the glossary.
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.
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
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.
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.
