for the community
accountability, laughter, cucumbers on the table. ballroom business, mid-afternoon.
tiohtiàke
sometime in april
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.
understated and sharp
the category is structure
still standing there
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.
marie-josèphe, une autre mémoire
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
kiki as resistance
theory. metaphor. refusal.
how we stayed alive.
held in the street
the murals watched. we didn’t march fast. our orange shirts carried what couldn’t be said.
mother toshiro sankofa
palestine in the frame. ballroom at the centre. blackness, unshaken.
#tiohtiàke #refusals #blackness #queerness #fragments #holdings
