light catching on ledges before it settles
stone holds it then lets it go
glass refuses the gesture, keeps everything moving
a figure caught in the wall, holding what arrives unchanged
below, the street moves through it slowly
as if nothing here is meant to stay— and still something does
a worker stepped outside and the building gave him up for the length of a cigarette.
smoke lifted, thin enough to pass inspection.
i sat across the way, waiting, where nothing was required of me.
the door closed and kept its number.
someone walked through the place the smoke marked.
the street resumed without remembering us.
i moved how the land moved low light over burnt slopes a single trunk split open but still standing
the ocean didn’t ask for me but it didn’t leave the train curved and my breath caught up
my chest found space the seat held my weight the hum matched the rhythm i didn’t know i was waiting for
i followed what stayed what didn’t flinch what made room without asking me to fold
ease came in through the ribs like memory like a name i used to know
not escape not softness just the truth of a body finally unbraced
i met myself in the quiet before the next turn
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.
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.
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.
walked here with oriol.
afternoon sun too bright to ignore.
the sign said bonjour like it meant something,
but i was already thinking about leaving.
met with malica this week— potential postdoc supervisor at beniba. submitted the queen’s predoc application too. if it all goes through, this might be my last summer here.
the city looked soft in the light— like it didn’t know i was saying goodbye.
drift doesn’t ask for arrival. just movement. just the soft ache of being somewhere you already know how to leave.