I’m not in the business of losing those that have proven themselves worthy to me: people, I have cultivated a relationship with, founded at the helm of veracity, reciprocity, devotion, empathy, and authenticity.
I know what it feels like to watch a love that was suppose to be “unconditional”, familial, diminish. I know what it feels like to lose your best friend for over 10 years, because she has “sacrificed” you for some insecure boyfriend. I know the wreckage of too many lost homies.
I can’t live this life. Everyone who I fucks with, whom I have forged a relationship with: you’re a treasure. I am thankful for each of you. Cherish each of you (regardless of how often we may, or many not speak). Appreciate the sanctity of our relationship to the bones. I love you.
Please, don’t shatter me.
Bastard of A Full Moon
An artist is not there to be at one with the world, he is there to transform it.
Anaïs Nin (via billyjane)
(via siemprevivalavida)
Decolonize Geography : Caribbean
Jamaica - Xaymaca (Taíno-Arawak)
Puerto Rico - Borikén or Borinquen (Taíno, meaning “Land of the Valiant Lord”)
Haiti/Dominican Republic - Haití (Taíno, meaning “Tall Mountain”. term referred to a region located on the island of Hispaniola and may have also been used to refer to the entire island.)
Bahamas - Ba-ha-ma (possible Lucayan origen, meaning ‘large mupper middle land’) or Lucayo (Taíno name for Bahama islands and inhabitants.)
Cuba - Caobana (Taíno, meaning “Great Place”)
Grenada - Camerhogne (Kalinago)
Carriacou - Kayryoüacou or Cariouwacou (Kalinago, meaning ‘Island surrounded by reefs’)
Trinidad - Lëre or Lele (Kalinago meaning ‘Land of the Humingbird’)
Tobago - Tobago (Kalinago)
Barbados - Ichirouganami (Arawak)
Dominica - Wai’tu kubuli (Kalinago, meaning “Tall is her body”)
Martinique - Madinina (Kalinago, meaning “Land of Flowers”)
St. Lucia - Hiwanarau (Kalinago, meaning “Land of the Iguana”)
St. Vincent - Hairoun (Kalinago, meaning “Land of the Blessed”)
Bequia - Becoua (Kalinago, meaning “Land of the Clouds”)
Canouan - Cannouan (Kalinago, meaning “Island of Turtles”)
Anguilla - Malliouhana (Arawak, meaning Arrow-Shaped Sea Serpent)
St. Martin - Soualiga (Arawak, meaning “Land of Salt”)
St. Barths - Ouanalao (Arawak)
Saba - Amonhana (Arawak)
St. Eustatious - Aloi (Arawak)
Saint Crioux - Ay Ay (Taíno)
Saint Kitts - Liamuiga (Kalinago, meaning “Fertile Land”)
Nevis - Oualle (Kalinago)
Montserrat - Alliouagana (Kalinago, meaning “Land of Prickly Bush”)
Barbuda - Wa’omoni (Kalinago)
Antigua - Wadadli (Kalinago, “Land of Fish Oil”)
Redonda - Ocananmanrou (Kalinago)
Guadeloupe - Karukera (Kalinago)
Marie-Galante - Aichi (Kalinago) or Touloukaera (Arawak)
(Source: biencafre, via sapphrikah)
Don’t explain. People only hear what they want to hear.
Paulo Coelho (via kari-shma)
(via quote-book)
(via theeducatedfieldnegro)
When I said I wasn’t with another girl
the January after we fell in love for the 3rd time,
it’s because it wasn’t actual sex.
In the February that began our radio silence,
it was actual sex. I hate the tight shirts
that go below your waistline.
Not only do they make you look too young,
but then your torso is a giraffe’s neck attached to tiny legs.
I screamed at myself in the subway
for writing poems about you still.
I made a scene. I think about you almost
each morning, and roughly every five days, I still
believe you’re there.
I still masturbate to you.
When we got really bad,
I would put another coat of mop water on the floor of the bar
to make sure you were asleep when I got to my side of the bed.
You are the only person to whom I’ve lied, knowing
I was telling the truth. I miss the way your neck
wraps around my face like a cave we are both lost in.
I remember when you said being with me
is like being alone with company.
My friend Sarah wrote a poem about pink ponies.
I’m scared you’re my pink pony.
Hers is dead. It is really sad. You’re not dead.
You live in Ohio, or Washington, or Wherever.
You are a shadow my body leaves on other girls.
I have a growing queue of things I know
will make you laugh and I don’t know where to put them.
I mourn like you’re dead. If you had asked me to stay,
I would not have said no.
It would never mean yes.
the January after we fell in love for the 3rd time,
it’s because it wasn’t actual sex.
it was actual sex. I hate the tight shirts
that go below your waistline.
but then your torso is a giraffe’s neck attached to tiny legs.
I screamed at myself in the subway
I made a scene. I think about you almost
each morning, and roughly every five days, I still
I still masturbate to you.
When we got really bad,
to make sure you were asleep when I got to my side of the bed.
You are the only person to whom I’ve lied, knowing
wraps around my face like a cave we are both lost in.
I remember when you said being with me
My friend Sarah wrote a poem about pink ponies.
I’m scared you’re my pink pony.
You live in Ohio, or Washington, or Wherever.
You are a shadow my body leaves on other girls.
will make you laugh and I don’t know where to put them.
I mourn like you’re dead. If you had asked me to stay,
It would never mean yes.
Jon Sands, A Working List of Things I Will Never Tell You (via holdonmagnolia)
(Source: theoryoflostthings)
Woman is the first environment.
Mohawk Midwife Kasti Cook
Racialized and Aboriginal Symposium went down on Saturday and none other than Krysta Williams facilitated a workshop, and opened with this quote. I am still staring at it because as orderly, neat and straight as it looks, in my mind it’s messy because it’s complex.
(via lovewashername)
or womb. but indeed.
(via baddominicana)
(via bad-dominicana)
(Source: italdred, via thothohtoht)
The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen…Perhaps it can’t be done without the poet, but it certainly can’t be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but that’s all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world.
James Baldwin
3
Love in an Ice Cream Truck by Erica Fabri
Love in an Ice Cream Truck
Yesterday, I took a walk downtown. It was winter
everywhere, except for the inside of my mouth.
I saw an ice cream truck parked on 3rd Avenue.
The man inside drew me toward his window
with a whistle that reminded me of the noise
a peacock makes. He had good-looking lips,
which always gets to me, so I gave him an attitude,
“Who the hell’s gonna buy ice cream on a day
like today?” He didn’t say a word, but instead,
winked, opened the side door, kicked out a two-step
ladder and whispered, “Come in.”
Inside, everything was made of chrome. Rows
of waffle cones hung from the ceiling like Chinese
Lanterns. He pulled a sheet of brown paper
from a large roll and laid it on the floor. When I took
off his shirt, he had a tattoo of a racecar on his torso.
“Zoom, zoom,” I said, and we started making love.
He held my face in his hands as if it were a grapefruit
he was testing for ripeness, and he barely breathed.
When we stopped, the only noise was the purr
of a refrigerator. “There’s a man you love,
isn’t there?” he asked me.
“There is.”
“What does he do wrong, that made you
end up in here with me?”
“He doesn’t kiss me enough.” I said.
“Why don’t you leave him?”
“Because I like the way he sleeps.
And I like that he never prays.”
The moon crept into the truck like a thief.
“I have to go.”
He kissed me nine times from soda fountain to doorstep.
When I was almost a block away, he stuck his head
out the ice cream window and yelled: “Have you ever
seen a volcano?” I didn’t even look back. As I followed the
sidewalk south I heard his voice three more times:
“You are a volcano! You are a volcano! You are a volcano!”
-erica fabri
10 
It’s a sad irony that we promote self-defense classes as a way of combating violence against women, yet many of the women of color, trans and cis alike, are currently imprisoned precisely because they fought back against violence in their homes and in the streets.
Too often trans and queer women of color survive violence in their homes and on the streets only to have the police, courts and prison-industrial complex come after them for having the audacity to survive in a world where, as Audre Lorde said in her poem “A Litany For Survival,” they “were never meant to survive.
The Trans Women’s Anti-Violence Project: Self-Defense and the Criminalization of Survival (via transgenderexpress)
(via thepersonalispolitic)
(Source: larepublicadedet, via bad-dominicana)
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