the inbox blooms while the death toll updates. i double-click silence. i open the portal, and brace for impact. someone is grieving a breakup. someone wants to disappear. i say mm-hmm, say yes, say tell me more. i do not say: the world is burning.

i scroll before sessions just to confirm that the grief is still real. it always is. congo, sudan, gaza flicker behind the scheduler. the platform asks: would you like to send a reminder?

i write: client was tearful, grounded in the session, able to reflect. i do not write: my chest is a locked file. my jaw clicks from clenching the names i cannot say aloud. the session ends. i bill.

my tea goes cold between autoplays. the footage plays muted, but i can hear it anyway. a child’s name trends— not for surviving. i check for land acknowledgements and evacuation orders in the same breath.

i do not scream. i do not post. i do not sob between sessions. i eat lunch like i’m supposed to. it tastes like anesthesia.

a client thanks me for holding space. i want to say: the space is breaking.

i am splintered between the rubble and the rubric, between my ethics and the endless wars. between holding the line and losing it completely.

i google how to stay human and close the tab. i light a candle and forget what it’s for. i try to write a post and delete the words: this is not okay.

but i say thank you. i say take care.

i write another note. i name the hour. i call it progress.

#tiohtiàke #holdings #refusals #fragments

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

found on a walking sign, half peeled, half legible. housing crisis? deport muslims. unclear if it’s fascism or mockery. as if that distinction ever mattered. the horror isn’t the message — it’s that it blends in. nothing shocks. just one more trace in a city that trades blame for shelter, displacement for safety, violence for policy.

#tiohtiàke #traces #surfaces #refusals #drift

got taller, this building. more glass. more echo. they call it growth. we remembered something else.

july 2018— after slāv, after kanata, after another season of voices stolen, then staged. we gathered here. we named what they wouldn’t. not just as protest. as refusal.

they built around it. more lights, more money, no redress. just steel stacked over silence.

and now that silver figure, blue-faced sentinel watching nothing. a monument to forgetting hollow as every apology we never heard.

but we carry the crack in the concrete. we remember because they designed it so we wouldn’t.

#tiohtiàke #refusals #blackness #fragments #drift

rigs still hanging. the crowd’s gone. just light, angles, and someone wrapping cables in the distance. no urgency. just the slow undoing of what passed through.

#tiohtiàke #drift #traces #surfaces #fragments #blackness #refusals

they painted it red. no signature. no spectacle. just a fact on a wall most people won’t read. someone bikes past. life goes on. or doesn’t.

#tiohtiàke #drift #refusals #blackness #traces #fragments

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

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.

#tiohtiàke #drift #refusals #traces #holdings #blackness