I had another voice before this. I believe it to be true. Somewhere in some womb, forever unknown to me, I heard a mother-tongue calling. But that was in another life I barely remember. A life briefly lived where I stayed. I mean, I was kept and I was not a stranger to myself. But I live this life now in a language I have coopted as mine through assimilation. Rough out of my chest but easy out of my lips, I speak in fragments; I know myself enough to utter aloud tales of reclamation and am unmoored from my…

If I wrote the piece I am scared to write it would go something like this:

I was adopted into a white family that claimed they had unconditional love. I was brought up in white communities and even lived in Oregon, founded to be a white utopia, for a brief spell. And even when I lived in Kenya, I lived on the school’s compound where most of the teachers were white and therefore were my neighbors. These spaces, families, and communities loved me. There is no denying that. But the love was conditional for many. Only when I did not…

I love you. I need you to know that before I begin. Because this is painful and I am asking us to step into the hard with no real direction out. This is not goodbye. At least it does not have to be. This is a crossroads. You love me and you are married to your whiteness and we cannot exist like this any longer. So either you must get a divorce or we must become braver apart than we are together.

We are something, you and I. Never nothing. Never not formerly something great. Now we are broken, for…

This Is Us

Last night, election night, I stood on the precipice of today and embodied every inch of my being. There I was at the fence peering in at the White House while Beyoncé’s Freedom played behind me, wondering how many more moments I will get after this one. I wonder how many people out here voted for liberation. And liberation from what and for who. On my hand were five stories of love in my life I had written before I arrived so I would remember why I voted and who I voted for. …

“I just kinda feel like I’m unworthy of this life. God gave me life and as much as I try, I’m living in sin. And that is the message I’m just getting from all these people around me. And I hate liking women. I wish I had a choice, maybe I do. But all I know is I’ve tried everything I can think of to be “cleansed from my sin” and I still can’t. I’m fucking wasting my life…. even if God does not view me as the devil’s work, does that mean that all of these adults around me…

TW: Self Harm

Here I am, sitting on this porch, computer in hand, watching the world move around me. The neighbor beside me has a dog that watches him smoke a blunt and I am not mad that the breeze is blowing towards me. The breeze is forgiving, breaking the heat and swirling around my face. I am one house in a long row going to my left and an alley that breaks me up from the house of my smoking neighbor. I watch the mosquitoes take my blood and half-heartedly try to kill them before I decide they are…

I used to think of Black women as matriarchs by tragedy, and activists by choice. To me, they were at the forefront of the fight for justice for the Black man and leading the way along with LGBTQ+ individuals.

No one ever told me Black women were martyrs.

No one ever mentioned they were also the victims of lynchings; that matriarchy did not have to be a thing given upon them by tragedy but could be a title by choice and a position of honor.

It has been over 150 days, and we are still demanding justice for the murder…