and i carry your unbelonging on my back like a loyal daughter

pray someday

You

Me

someone

will recognize

you, me, us

Who we are

and I reflect on all the ways

i gave myself up

to bear your weight

I walked for so long

without a sense of me

only echoes

whispers

traces

with each step

against my neck you’d breathe and speak:

chingona

don’t cry don’t bleed

smile pretty

chingona

stifle your past, it’s a weakness.

chingona

these are the conditions of ‘freedom.’

chingona

You say to me

And I wonder how things would be different

If you’d accepted who you are

Chingona

you say to me

and I think of your mother, your father

Child of the

The gray:

something both and neither

parting with your shame

i’ll carry this no longer

i love you

as in:

I love all of who I am

what we’ve lost

who we are.

the courage you never had

the love you never received

i call forward and grieve

The failed attachment to a mother

whose womb uprooted

grasped for soil; safety

mere men cannot offer

and with this resentment

she spoon fed

her sons

living reminders

only land understands

the ways the tether remains

no matter how you seek to deny or destruct it

only land understands

to forfeit, to disappear your roots

is to sever vital connection

to wither slowly

to thirst incessantly

to be devoured by your own hunger

incompleteness;

whiteness:

Not even sure what’s missing

Only that something is gone

phantom limbs

haunted

reach, hum, throb

if you listen

this wound is a song

Te Rezo

In bloody tongues

This is for Nina

This is for Tata

This is for Tia, Tio

and for Tina.

this is for me.

this is for my father:

Podamos sanar la herida.

“Catch your fire, don't kill

Hold your fire, don′t kill

Learn your fire, don't kill

Be the fire, don't kill

Catch the fire

And live”

-sonia sanchez

Fire

Is about dignity 

How do you tend to it?

I burned it

Pages of you

Torn from the binding

Shredded

All Seams

No substance

Frayed

Threadbare

I search these edges

for what’s left

Of your

integrity

screaming

exposed

inflamed

devitalized tissue

rotten sinew

you cannot heal

what you hate

i curl my lip, reach for my liver

filth eater

make what is septic, bitter

equal parts resilience and vigor

Feed and nurture the flame.

one hand to the earth

one hand to the womb.

inhale, exhale

release to make room

Begin again: Re-member your name.

My grief is an honor

You can’t take

Can’t silence

My love

Endures

Insists

Regardless

I burned it.

My love is a field you cannot damage

I burned it.

I reclaim what’s mine, what you took for granted.

I burned it.

I return you your shame, your sickness, your famine.

I burned it.

Fire is about dignity 

and how you tend to it.

Mama, sigo siendo tu hija.

this is not a call for mercy

we all die here;

this is a song;

arterial pulse.

the heart contracts

and i re-member

sun

water

dust.

gods in my fingertips

my womb a testament

to life’s longing for itself

Mama, soy tu hija.

there is no salvation

no utopia

only breath

blood

salt

and this is enough.

low pressure

song;

aching belly.

can’t find my pulse

my center of gravity

both a gaping hole

& a writhing knot

all i smell is blood

nauseous shock

(is this what 'trauma' is? Is this what 'trauma' does?)

alters us by

blunt force

sheer will

brutal juggernaut

between

debilitating grief

and profound rage

I stagger, I reel, I sway

engulfed in fire

rolled by waves

i surrender to the clouds

I weep

I scream

I pray

my breath expands

i become Lightning

Thunder

Storm

this anger is grief is love is pain

this burn is frightening

but fire transforms

so i endure

i surrender

(re-member)

become through

y que el mundo sea mejor.

y que el mundo sea mejor.

y que el mundo sea mejor.

unmoored

i too become the driftwood

worn by water’s memory

my shape defined by the gaze of my witness

don’t forget, please don’t forget:

water re-members everything.

tendrils of a life once bounded

tethers torn, uprooted

stretch out

grasping

bleeding

phantom limbs

in search of earth, something to hold

cruel attachments seeking certainty, control

deface living, deface meaning.

unmoored we give ourselves up

surrender to the salt

unmoored we reckon

with our own capacity to destruct.

we pray:

forgive us, please forgive us

our chests heaving

retching

screaming

we re-member

this is not the end, but the beginning

we gather and disperse, we unveil

the brutality of the individual self

sent by Ocean, rolled by water, flung by waves*

we give ourselves up, we give ourselves away*

we practice and consent not to being a single-being*

*prose here are references to the work of Fred Moten.

i sit here

(underwater)

find breath

watch the sediment drift

clear

sink

i feel the tides shift; the Moon’s tilt

the pull of currents above/within/beneath:

blood of the Earth;

deep sea Fire;

the friction

of pain pressurizing

bleeds vitality.

i lick y(our) wounds

make the pain clean

(weep, grieve, release)

(repeat)

(i said repeat)

from the footholds of The Break

i learn to see

you

(in me)

me

(in you)

(differently)

together

we reckon, we witness

we unravel

cleanse

(breathe)

reweave

here the Water makes holy

beckons the Serpent

devours dis-ease.

here the Salt purifies

(and the Oxygen is not depleting, is not screaming)

here we welcome the dark space

befriend it’s guardians, its sentries.

together

we change, resurface

(‘we go back!’)

to begin again:

worn by Water's memory.

remember yourself land filth eater.

call in the dead, call in the snake

deity of the black fertile

fecund earth

proverbial give-and-take

undulate.

this mouth ringed in excrement

señales 

decomposition

departed

expired

skin

exoskeletal regeneration

these cells no longer serve your movement

(liberalos, cleanse)

this shedding the arrival

of tender tinder

(Smoke rises)

We sway, dance harder

to mother moon

water witch.

in death: we trust,

the soul rises,

we pray,

find rhythm

wind.

a boundary is a membrane

water-laden tissue

this between place

a passageway

a through-place

both me & you

i say self-determination

but what I really mean

is aerobic movement

cellular improvisation

breath

despite exertion.

more than one.

more than me.

more than you

an ensemble

of memory + resonance

freedom & betrayal.

an endless dance of that which is none of us

plays out

between skin and cells.

between

Tracing the edges:

Fingertips

Graze the distance

Between

You in me

Me in you

Between

Surrender and

Resistance

Between: (a noun and a verb)

An Induction

an Alchemy

An Insistence

Of what is neither me nor you.

the violence we have learned pt. 1

disquieted entitlement

feeds to fill

this void

this wound

insatiable pits of unworthiness

unbelonging is violent

in what it destroys

consumes:

you see home is what you make it.

let me crawl into the space between skin and bone

let me live between the folds

invade your fascial tissue

you said i was my own 

parasitic 

this 'reciprocity' feels narcissistic

i guess a boundary is but a membrane

to eat through

let my thirst drain you

of your own water;

your own

relational

distinctness

so i can live

some place other than myself.

make your body my host;

my ‘dream house’

call it anarchy, liberation.