001. on multiple truths

There’s a prisoner in Rikers who hasn’t seen the sun since July.

I don’t want to write. I don’t want to feel anything but joy. Don’t want to work on anything but how to build ceramic walls as I take a pottery class for the second time. I want to go on more dates holding hands, snuggle up to more no-longer-strangers in dimly lit bars in the East Village. More speaking French on first dates. More picnics in more parks. More fucking during the day behind sheer curtains over open windows. More watching a temporary lover walk naked from here to there, the bedroom to the kitchen and back, drinking water and bringing me a glass to quench our inevitable thirst—a quick break between all our not-love-making, holding, crying. And after, I want more people singing to me in languages I can’t speak but understand.

But there is at least one prisoner in Rikers who hasn’t seen the sun since July. And the urgency in that, in all the unnecessary darkness and dying, is under consideration for possible closure in 2027, amid overcrowding and contagion, almost two years into a global pandemic. And the judge in Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial said the people he murdered in cold blood could not be called “victims” because that kind of language was suggestive, but “rioters, looters, or arsonists”, was okay. And abortion rights are shriveling in Texas. And workers everywhere are being exploited, squeezed and pressed for every ounce of life. And Dave Chappelle thinks Black trans death is fodder. And too many people agree. 

The dead are gone and we claim to care as we malign the living.

And I read something that made me realize I’ve been grieving for 24 years. Which made me remember that something is always dying, which means something else is always being born. 

Time feels slow today. Maybe it’s the inching cold. Maybe Sudan is catching up to us all. The sins against Afghanistan, against Palestine, a historied world map of reckoning. One year after what happened at Lekki Toll Gate when I saw a man die on Instagram Live and, choking back fresh tears, reported to a 4 pm conference call, where no one cared.

Or sometime earlier this year, because what is time, when I saw Palestinian children thrown from the windows of their parent’s homes, families expelled into the night, then charged for the demolition of a lifetime of memories. Now, the graves of their dead will be dug up to build theme parks. And I realized not even the dead can rest because even death can be commodified. The dead receive mail. Bills. Release music. Have concerts. Posthumously publish.

I am always wondering what it means to be free.

But last night, someone kissed my hand tenderly in a restaurant, kept me laughing, losing my breath as they patiently held me close, despite my foolishness, and looked at me lovingly too.