i didn’t walk. i sat in the first row, just close enough to feel the beat in my chest. the floor glowed — not metaphorically, but actually. light from above, sharp and circular, caught on the sweat of someone’s shoulder mid-dip. it stayed there longer than expected.

people were yelling. not words, just recognition. you know the sound. when a move is too precise, too smooth, too honest to be ignored. someone hit the floor and bounced back like they never touched it. a house name echoed. as legend. as fact. as affirmation.

i watched. not from a distance, but from a place that knew how close it all is to disappearing. how fast the lights go down. how quickly the archive forgets us.

a phone beside me was shaking: someone filming, their hands unable to stay still. the dj looped a beat that rose from under the floor, not over it. and in that moment, nothing was held back.

i wasn’t walking. but i was inside it. inside the noise, the heat, the charge. inside the circle of people screaming each other into aliveness.

and that’s the thing. this isn’t spectacle. it’s communion. it’s how we stay legible to each other.

in the light of our own making. again. in the light of our own making. again. until the lights cut, until the floor clears, until the next time.

#tiohtiàke #queerness #blackness #surfaces #holdings

it started slowly, like most good things. paul and i drifted through vieux-montréal, not in a hurry, not quite anchored. work came in waves—open tabs, notes half written, a reply sent too late but still meaningful. the afternoon stretched without agenda. there’s a softness in being accompanied without being watched.

the streets felt unfamiliar in a familiar way. like they’d been repainted since last week but forgot to dry. a man singing to himself passed us near saint-paul. no one looked twice.

by the time we reached frontenac, the air had changed. just enough rain to make you notice. just enough light to feel like something was ending.

we said goodbye without ceremony. no need for it.

i kept walking east, alone. the drizzle softened the sounds of the city. my breath felt louder than usual. there’s something about walking in the rain that makes your thoughts feel more like weather than noise.

the lights on sherbrooke flickered early. someone had chalked a heart onto the sidewalk that was already dissolving.

i didn’t take a photo. it didn’t need to last.

i just kept moving. not away, not toward. just through.

#tiohtiàke #walks #holdings #surfaces #traces

no caption needed. the city already said it.

#tiohtiàke #refusals #traces #surfaces

after the rain, the colours feel staged. the village waits to be repopulated. someone forgot their joy on a wet bench.

#tiohtiàke #surfaces #traces #queerness

they cross just as the light turns green. the street doesn't pause, but something in the air does.

#tiohtiàke #walks #surfaces #traces

they look out like they won. the water doesn't care.

#lisboa #refusals #traces #surfaces #drift

maybe this is what pause looks like. sun on porcelain. bridge in the distance. book barely opened. the city behind the cup isn’t waiting. it just moves. but for a moment, i don’t.

#lisboa #surfaces #traces #drift #fragments

they still whisper her name like it’s dangerous. but this isn’t a whisper. it’s a scream, wheatpasted to brick. marie-josèphe angélique—enslaved, accused, executed. not for a crime, but for refusing to live quietly in a world built to crush her.

je me souviens, they say. but they don’t mean her. they mean the colony. they mean the order she tried to set fire to.

this paper will peel, fade, dissolve into dust. but she was never paper. she was kindling. and we’re still burning.

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

this city loves a moral lesson in spray paint.

#tiohtiàke #surfaces #traces #fragments

pink sky, mesh shirt, keffiyeh on the straps. joy is not the absence of struggle. it’s what we carry through it.

#tiohtiàke #queerness #holdings #refusals #surfaces #traces