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