soft grass surrounds as I climb and stare -- smile with a quiet hum on my shoulder who wants to stay or maybe say something. memories don’t press pause even though I tumbled onto the grass, fumbled through the front door and into the dining chairs and under and over my seven-year-old tears.

You taught me language as wicked as thick lashes in fuel. This island’s mine, be sure. Transfer this speech to fresh springs, brine pits, toads, beetles, bats with berries in’t. Come unto these yellow sands with old cramps of all ill pains to make thee speak. A thing divine; kissed into this rock.

Nostalgia means that there is some vision which it is important that we try to preserve. It goes beyond just fact, into something entirely different. It has become standard which you now try to uphold, it is a standard which you try to teach people about, which you hope that others begin to recognize.

I believe we are reading this in soft focus and unison. Next, we will revert to what once was . . . those custom-crafted propellers calling your name, etc. We toil with the facts . . . Mild decisions coupled with a sour aftertaste, expressing: you have been on my mind.

Groundwork, governance, kinship, connection, and mobility -- these are the green things that I see in our first flag and elsewhere.

Harmful behavior toward Black women isn’t enough to inspire change until others are harmed, but the original harms are often lost by journalists tasked with covering tech. The power and rhetoric that went unchecked becomes common. And the tactics used against Black women for “lulz” become weapons used in the conspiracies destabilizing the very nature of truth, from the swarming of victims to posing as Black women to destabilizing communities (or countries).

I had written my love and longing where the Devil couldn’t see . . . In this half-cooked egg of your life, everything that had seemed soft, lovely, and nourishing was filled with pain, but I never paid any attention. I thought of this excess of beauty as I felt thick, heavy glops of your life scorching my breasts.

I’m not a fan of bright lights in small rooms and instead prefer lighting that is responsive to the amount of space that surrounds me. Another way of putting it is that the lighting needs to be reflective of what is nearby. An evening light that is small, localized, and selective leaves room for surrounding darkness. Here, light and dark aren’t at odds with one another; they co-mingle within a mostly dark continuum of my walls, furniture, and stuff.

my favorite passenger noise on the bus or train is music that’s playing from somebody’s phone, without headphones, because it prompts people to be quiet. does this still happen? it had a stronger effect when phones were kinda crummy but advanced enough to play mp3’s. songs were definitely identifiable but distorted enough to reflect the different pages we were on, different impressions of the song, different pathways between our respective starts and destinations. it took a little longer to recognize the song back then. u know what i mean?

The pasture is teaching me poetry, because what one would defend about the pasture when it is beautiful, it is harder to defend when it’s ugly. If I came here when the place was utterly hell, I would have left like anybody else. In a sense now, I am faced with a nostalgic situation, perhaps. I’m now harking back after Eden or harking back after a Lost Paradise, something like that.

Thinking through the ways in which I wish we were different to each other. Wishing that the washed up protocols could tell us to behave and how. Washing our hands, your face, my fingertips, your lips, my eyes, our lies, and then some. Knowing that there was once evidence of aggregate encounters: intended with intensity, like a lisp. We’re not at we, but I think you know what I mean.

What kind of schools and what kind of streets and what kind of parks and what kind of privacy and what kind of beauty and what kind of music and what kind of options would make love a reasonable, easy response?

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