Title: You Can’t Swipe Left on Liberation

“somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff” — Ntozake Shange, for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf Shange wasn’t talking about possessions. She was talking about the self. The particular, irreplaceable accumulation of a woman — her rhythm, her voice, her way of moving through the world — […]

Title: The Flesh Remembers

My granny used to say it the way she said everything — plainly, without ceremony, like the truth didn’t require decoration. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. She meant it as a word about accountability. About the weight of living in a fallen world with the best of your intentions and still […]

Title: Visibility Is Not Safety

Content note: This essay contains a first-person account of sexual assault. Please read with care. Some days I walk into a room and the room rearranges. Not loudly. Nothing so dramatic as a scene. Just the air — shifting, recalculating, deciding what I am before I open my mouth. I have been walking into rooms […]

The Body As Evidence

What do you do when the world expects you to be strong? So I have to ask myself what do I do with all this anger? What club do I have to join to feel I’m equal? My protest like my country isn’t a melting pot. My protest is a riot… Where were you when […]

Questions

What do you do when the world expects you to be strong?Nina said “my skin is black, my arms are long, my hair is wooly, and my back is strong. Strong enough to take the pain inflicted again and again” So I have to ask myself what do I do with all this anger? What […]

I Am

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will […]

Daring Greatly

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who […]

Daddy Lessons

I’ve always felt disillusioned with the way social media portrays life for#Gay men. There seem to be 3 archetypes explored in the exploitation of our experience; comedic relief, the martyr, and the weak of resolve. You’re either funny, bold, or afraid. Considering that I have been on a path to no longer embrace my character; […]

Pearls before Swine

Processional of wounds exposed, degraded, exploited, and highlighted. Value lost and trampled over lost opportunities to establish vulnerabilities. I thought I saw a man foreign to my eye– he was kind, honest, and dignified. However this man sold the pieces that were given, bronze to gold so quickly was my destination and mold. Be kind […]