we lay down because they can’t.

this was a die-in. healthcare workers, gathered in the middle of the city, bodies on the ground for gaza. we were there not just as clinicians, not just as queers, not just as people trained to care— but as witnesses to a system that pretends to be neutral while choosing a side. we already knew that silence wasn’t an accident. we’ve seen it before—in the wards, in the media, in the funding reports. but still, there’s something about laying your body down on cold ground that makes the grief feel sharper. and makes the refusal feel real.

my keffiyeh wasn’t a symbol. it was a practice. a reminder. a commitment to name genocide where others equivocate. to be present when presence costs something.

the pink triangle on my chest traced a line back to act up, to queer resistance in the face of state abandonment. but this wasn’t about metaphor. this was about gaza. about children buried under rubble. about medics killed in white coats. about naming what we know, and what our institutions refuse to say.

i didn’t speak. i didn’t need to. sometimes protest is not what you say but what you don’t move to stop.

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

i looked up and didn’t try to name any of them.

no constellations. no directions. just stars— scattered, distant, alive.

i don’t always need meaning. sometimes it’s enough to know something else is out there.

something beyond   what this world keeps asking me to carry.

#cayoguillermo #drift #fragments #traces #holdings #blackness

this is where the wealth came in.   sugar. cotton. tobacco.   extraction and enclosure made into ornament.

the names are still here—   merchant, plantation, st. vincent—   not by accident.   this city remembers through what it refuses to rename.

i walk this route not to map it,   but to feel where the archive ends.

this dérive isn’t about finding answers.   it’s about tracking the infrastructure of forgetting.   what the buildings obscure.   what the street names naturalize.   what passes for neutral.

these façades aren’t just stone.  they’re policy.  they’re inheritance. they’re proof that the empire never left—  just rebranded.

#glasgow #traces #refusals #blackness #drift

i wasn’t here for this.   just passing through—   a few hours between panels across town,   a few steps off schedule.

but the building held something.   not promise exactly.   just presence.   age without apology.   history without invitation.

i looked up   and thought:   maybe.

#glasgow #drift #fragments #traces #surfaces

found in glasgow.   a plaque for john a. macdonald.   not torn down, not defaced—   just waiting.   quiet.   official.

the story is familiar.   lawyer. prime minister. nation-builder.   but here, the stones don’t pretend neutrality.   they know what they financed.

this isn’t a canadian monument.   it’s an imperial one.   because macdonald didn’t just build a country—   he extended a project.   settler logic made portable.

the plaques change languages,   but the story stays the same.

the empire loops.   it doesn’t end.   it reappears in bronze and sandstone,   across oceans,   still naming itself as legacy   instead of violence.

#glasgow #refusals #traces #blackness #drift

spotted in a museum across the ocean. a totem pole far from the coast from which it came.

the plaque talked about artistry.   not land.   not theft.   not how many hands it passed through   before arriving here, under spotlights.

i didn’t read the full description.   didn’t want to.   the object already said more than the label ever could.

some things don’t lose power   just because they’ve been displaced.

#glasgow #drift #refusals #traces #blackness #fragments

the symmetry felt like a question   no one was answering.

no one else on the platform.   just the hum of something approaching   but not yet here.

sometimes the wait stretches   longer than the journey.   sometimes the quiet   is what stays with you.

#washingtondc #drift #surfaces #fragments #traces

left lisbon.   mozambique.   maranhão.

it’s written cleanly,   like logistics.   like movement is neutral.

but this isn’t a voyage.   it’s a structure.

i stood in dc,   beneath that sentence carved into the wall,   and felt how small   archives can make the wound.

western cape archives, south africa.   reference number.   no names.

the record survives.   the people were meant not to.

#washingtondc #traces #blackness #fragments #refusals #drift

me and pépère.   his hand behind my head,   making ears.   mine holding a notepad   like i already knew i’d need one.

we didn’t match.   not in skin.   not in story.   but for a moment,   we belonged to the same living room.

transracial adoption doesn’t leave space   for moments like this.   too tender.   too confusing.   too real.

but this was family.   not the kind they put in pamphlets—   the kind you survive through.

#davidson #drift #fragments #holdings #traces

the categories below are not containers. they are orientations. they offer no fixed meaning—only a way to move through this space alongside me.

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#traces

traces are what remain after the moment has passed. a warm cigarette on the curb. a hesitation in someone’s voice. a memory that returns without explanation.

these entries follow what refuses to be resolved. what echoes. what lingers. traces often live below the surface. they are residue, imprint, or presence without narrative.

⸻

#walks

these are mapped and unmapped passages of the dérive. where the body moves without destination, but not without intention.

a street, a staircase, an alleyway. a turn you didn’t plan to take.

each walk is a record of encounter—geographic, emotional, speculative. some walks are literal. others are historical or imagined.

⸻

#fragments

fragments are the form that survival often takes. a quote. a photo. a sentence held on a page like breath held in the chest.

these are not broken thoughts. they are complete in their incompleteness. they do not seek to become whole.

here, fragment is both form and method. it resists the archive and honours the partial.

⸻

#refusals

refusals are not always rejections. they are acts of care. they are limits. they are protection. to refuse is to say no, but also to say not this and not now.

posts marked by refusal hold space for the things i turn away from. institutions. platforms. recognition. capture.

refusal is not a lack. it is a condition for imagining something else.

⸻

#surfaces

surfaces are what the body registers first. the weight of air. the sound of shoes on wet pavement. the shine on a plastic bench.

these are not shallow observations. they are signals. they are textures. they carry meaning before we name it.

to attend to surfaces is to attend to how we live through touch and proximity.

⸻

#holdings

holdings are what we carry with us. grief. joy. memory. pressure. intimacy.

these are posts about weight and care. what stays. what returns. what we carry for ourselves and for each other.

holding is not only about burden. it is also about love.

⸻

#blackness

blackness here is not identity in the narrow sense. it is geography. it is condition. it is tension and excess. it is refusal, beauty, memory, and disruption.

posts in this category move through black space, black time, and black feeling. they are not explanatory. they are not proof. they are presence.

⸻

#queerness

queerness is movement that resists capture. it loops. it drifts. it changes shape.

these are posts about queer time, queer kinship, and the ways queer life survives and flourishes in the margins. they are not about labels. they are about gestures, affinities, and the shimmer that moves between us.

⸻

#drift

drift is the movement itself. it is the rhythm that runs through everything.

these posts reflect on the dérive—the process of moving without destination, and what emerges along the way.

drift is not aimless. it is how we find what was not meant to be found.

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these categories aren’t exhaustive. some posts may move through many. others may resist classification entirely.

that is the point.

this is not a taxonomy. it is a choreography. a way to move through this space with intention, and with me.