CLOUDrhythm

Here I am… on Tumblr, I’m Forrest… on Instagram I’m @FavoriteLibrarian.

Truth be told— let it be told,

This story’s getting way too old.

She held herself together somehow,

‘Til she just couldn’t hold on now.

Lexapro and long heavy nights,

Trying hard to win her fights.

What kind of friends are we?

We heard the silence and couldn’t see.

What kind of friends are we?

Standing where she used to be.

Now we’re dressed in black instead,

Talking to the ones she left.

The past was always on her heels,

The future never felt too real.

She kept waiting for a sign.

She’d laugh along, she’d play her part.

Never showing us her heart.

Every locked door, every key—

How’d we miss what we didn’t see?

She thought she didn’t fit this place,

She carried that on every day.

If we’d known how close she’d come,

We’d have never let her run.

Truth be told— let it be told,

This story’s getting way too old.

We’re still chasing cars and ghosts,

Missing the one we loved the most.

What kind of friends are we?

What kind of friends will we become?

If somebody whispers, “I’m not okay,”

You were never hard to love.

You were hard to leave.

There’s a difference.

You carried your people

like they lived beneath your skin—

marsh water in your veins,

Spanish moss in your prayers,

your grandmother’s hands

every time you reached for mine.

I think you wanted me

the way Geechee women love:

not loud,

but permanent.

Like a house

built high enough

to survive the flood.

I came from crossing things.

Borders.

Languages.

Versions of myself.

Home was never one place.

It was whatever I could carry

before someone asked me to unpack.

You kept asking,

“Do you see me?”

I did.

I saw the little girl

who learned that love

could disappear before supper.

The woman

who laughed too hard

when she was scared.

The librarian

cataloging every goodbye

before it happened.

You called yourself guarded.

I don’t think you were.

I think every lock

you ever put on your heart

had the key

still hanging in the door.

You just wanted someone

brave enough

to turn it.

I wasn’t.

Not because you weren’t enough.

Because I still belonged

to ghosts

that spoke Spanish.

You blamed Mexico.

But it wasn’t my country

you were losing to.

It was my unfinished life.

You loved roots.

I only knew roads.

So if you still smell

cilantro and myrrh,

know I smell saltwater

when it rains.

I still think of you

when I pass a library.

When I hear a woman laugh

like she’s trying not to cry.

When I see moss

hanging from trees

I’ve never learned the names of.

You were never too much.

You were simply asking

for a home

from someone

who was still

Just when I fell in love with her—

She smelled like cilantro and myrrh.

Introduced her to my mama’s recipes,

And she begged to finally see me.

Doesn’t take Santa Muerte to see

How she bargains to be free.

’Cause her heart belongs to an eagle

On a cactus only she can see.

And when I thought I’d found a dove,

It was a blackbird dressed as love.

“In my rancho, you’d have to leave,”

She said what she had to believe.

Sixty-three days sober of me—

Every mile grows lonelier to see.

Driving past Too Far Gone,

Rehearsing who’s right and wrong.

Reaching for her absent side,

Just a foolish ride-or-die.

And somewhere in another county—

You’re just a drunk dummy.

Watching soccer through a screen,

She hates to dance or to be seen.

Your whereabouts and who shouts—

It only multiplies the doubt.

Past the borders of hope,

Knee-deep inside the dope.

The only thing missing is her—

I have lived like a possum

so long

I no longer know

which deaths were performances

and which ones were real.

I learned that if I lay still enough,

the world would lose interest.

There is a particular kind of disappearing

reserved for those

who have survived being looked at

without ever being seen.

I became fluent in it.

As a woman and Black— and Queer—

You learn early—

that invisibility is rarely absence.

It is labor.

It is reading every room

before the room reads you.

It is swallowing whole versions of yourself

so someone else

can remain comfortable.

Then, when the footsteps faded,

I’d stand,

brush the dirt from my coat,

and pretend

nothing had happened.

I smiled

before anyone could ask

whether I had broken.

I laughed

before anyone mistook my silence

for permission.

Like the unnamed man

who discovered that invisibility

was not magic

but refusal—

I learned that a body can occupy space

while its truth goes unseen.

The trick was never fooling them.

They had already decided

what they could not see.

The trick

was convincing myself

that disappearing

wasn’t becoming.

That survival

wasn’t the same thing

as living.

One day,

I want to rise

before the danger has passed.

I want to stop rehearsing my own death

for people

who have never once

mourned me.

I want to live

without mistaking visibility

for permission.

Without mistaking survival

Happy Pride!

This one is for all my people, that’s didn’t make it.

I remember you and you were real. You were here— check in on all your people.

I had such a tragic birthday, this year, that I don’t ever want to remember, or acknowledge, March 20. Ever again.

It’s just another day. Please let it pass, and go by.

So, each year I’m going to pick one day and celebrate it randomly as my birthday.

It’s keeps me safe. Protects my mind and allows me to celebrate me, privately… without an audience, or expectation to be happy.

I simply want to exist with the sound of my own soul, desperately trying to be seen and heard underneath my ribs.

Nor asking, and mostly begging, to feel whole or special.

I know I’ll cry tears throughout the Alex Isley concert— but these will be tears of joy to celebrate me quietly, on a random Tuesday, in May.

BTS with Gaye Magazine!

Had a good Time last night… kinda

I don’t have many queer women or black lesbian friends here in Atlanta and it’s starting to bother me now.

I want more Atlanta Lesbian and Queer Womyn friends. 🤎

“Where are my lesbians!?”