When Adelaide Befriended A Squirrel
Adelaide used to tell us this story often. She carried this narrative with her in a cool layer beneath her skin. And because her storytelling gaze always shone with stubborn hope, even in the darkest hours, We never grew tired of hearing her tale.
A Writer's 23rd Birthday Declaration
Today is my 23rd birthday. This is what my family calls the Psalm 23, LeBron James, and Michael Jordan year, a year of intentionality and transformation. Admittedly, I'm excited and scared. If 2020 taught me anything, it’s that I'm not always entitled to the plans I make in life and that even the most quotidian things shouldn't be taken for granted. Over these past couple of months, I have been sketching my next novel, drafting a couple of sections at a time. Right now, the novel has the working title Behold Azara’s Blaze. But if I'm being honest with myself, I haven’t been working on this next writing project in earnest. I’m nervous about entering into the creative process while establishing necessary boundaries for myself.
Listening to Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon While Taking My Braids Aloose
There was something very honest about listening to a Black woman tell a story about Black people while I was doing a very Black thing. It felt very central, ancestral. Toni Morrison’s voice was softer, more delicate than I expected it to be. But there was also something raw and coarse about it, in a very familiar way. If you listen closely, you discover that there’s something buried in her voice, like there’s a thick lump of molasses caught in her throat, like she’s swallowing back what’s not quite sadness, not quite rage, but more like the awe of both of them. Listening to her felt natural and intimate, like my kinky hair roots, the story unraveling like my braids.
Black Rose
What could have caused such a grotesque deformity?
I always answer you
in a language you refuse to hear,
from roots you try to curse,
with beauty you fail to acknowledge.
“What inspired you to write 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑊𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑦 ?”
Happy New Year, everyone! I hope that 2021 has been treating you all well so far. There’s a lot of work to be done, but I have full faith that this will be a year of transition, progress, and healing. With this new beginning, I can’t help but reflect on my writing journey. I often find it hard to believe that The We and the They has been out in the world for five months already. It’s been an honor engaging with you all as we’ve explored different aspects of the story together. Though I am beginning to shift my focus toward other writing projects (more to come on that! 🤓✍🏽), The We and the They will always be, not the beginning, but a beginning of me seeing myself as a writer. It’s not a linear process in the slightest, but that’s what makes it all the more rewarding.
The Free We
We are the Forgotten
Poem’s children.
We drink ground morphemes distilled in alkaline water,
gurgling syntaxes pooling in our saliva.
Primordial stardust
coalesces into the hornets
that swarm and rage in our small intestines.
That sting is our fuel.
A Writer’s Faith
I try to carve her
from hallowed words in my thesaurus,
but maybe she isn’t one person.
Perhaps she is a chorus
of harmonious dissonances
gurgling from honeyed ash-like timbre choices,
one shared mosaic face
with a kaleidoscope of voices.