the summer hurts

White punks screaming about the same politics, the same fucked-up shit, and even about racial issues and injustices they don’t even particularly face, are wholeheartedly accepted, never questioned, never told to tone down, and never told to relax. No matter how justified I am, or how down for the cause they are, they’re put off by my very valid rage. Why is that? What is it about a Black girl doing the same shit white men do that makes them feel like it’s too much? How am I the only one being labeled too aggressive in a genre that is all about aggression?

In my dream I apologize to everyone I meet. Instead of introducing myself, I apologize for not knowing why I am alive. I am sorry. I am sorry. I apologize. In real life, oddly enough, when I am fully awake and out and about, if I catch someone’s eye, I quickly look away. Perhaps this too is a form of apology.

kiss your friends’ faces more / destroy the belief that intimacy must be reserved for monogamous relationships / be more loving / embrace platonic intimacy / embrace vulnerability / use emotionality as a radical tactic against a society which teaches you that emotions are a sign of weakness / tell more people you care about them / hold their hands / tell others you are proud of them / offer support readily / take care of the people around you

This year has been the hardest of your whole life. so hard you cannot see a future, most days. The pain is bigger than anything else. Takes up the whole horizon, no matter where you are. You feel unsafe you feel unsaved. Your past so present you can feel your baby teeth. Sitting on the couch, you swear your feet don’t reach the floor. You keep remembering the first time you saw a bird’s nest. Held together by an old shoe lace and scraps of a plastic bag You knew the home of a person could be built like that A lot of things you’d rather throw away You keep worrying you’re taking up too much space. I wish you’d let yourself be the milky way Remember when I told you I was gonna become a full time poet And you paid my rent for three years? Best Friend, Angel of the get through. All living is storm chasing. Every good heart has lost its roof. Let all the walls collapse at your feet, Scream timber when they ask you how you are. Fine is the suckiest word. It is the opposite of HERE Here is the only place left on the map Here is where you learn laughter can go extinct and come back I am already building the museum For every treasure you unearth in the rock bottom Holy vulnerable cliff God mason, heart heavier than all the bricks Say this is what the pain made of you An open open open road An avalanche of feel it all Don’t ever let anyone tell you, you are too much Or it has been too long Whatever keeps the stutterer from stuttering when he sings a song you are made of that thing That unbreakable note That photography of you at five years old, the year you ran away from school, because you wanted to go home. You are almost there. You are the same compass you have always been You are the same friend who never left my side during my worst year You caught every tantrum I threw with your bare hands chucked it back at the blood moon said its okay, everyone’s survival looks a little bit like death I wrote a poem called “say yes” while I was cursing you For not letting me go. Best friend, this is what we do. We gather each other up. We say, the cup is half yours and half mine. We say alone is the last place you will ever be. We say tonight lets stay inside reading pema chodron while everyone else is out on the town pema will say “only to the extent we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found” You’ll say Pema is so wise. And I’ll say yes she is, and we are too. Angels of the get through. We are too.