a series of ramblings

Hello again. It has been a while, hasn’t it? I should apologize for my absence, but truth be told, I simply haven’t had much to say. There’s a peace in that somewhere, but mostly, I think I’ve just been in a profound shock. There aren’t many words I can string together to express my state of mind lately, maybe you can relate to that as well. There are some words, though, the lucky few that squeezed themselves from my clenched fingers and onto my journal despite my every effort. I thought I could share some of them with you today.

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a beautiful morning, 2025

When I was younger (though older than I care to admit), I asked my mother if the sun still rose during the hundred days, if the birds still chirped, and if rainbows were bold enough to show themselves. I wondered how she could still look up to the sky and see a God worth praying to.

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3am on a Friday, 2025

Today, I saw a video of three generations of Rwandans singing together. I watched the progress of time on the faces of a daughter, a mother, and a grandmother, and I was overtaken by a deep sense of jealousy

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everyday since my first period, 2024

There’s an anger in me, something old, almost biblical. It pulls at my chest and singes my skin. I have a sadness in me, it is foreign, something inherited. Yesterday, my mother said I sighed like her mother

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that hour before the house wakes up, 2025

I saw a video that said, “I have never gotten over anything in my life.” I agree. I carry my past with me like a second skin. I take it all with me. It’s how I love, speak, talk, and walk. Memory fades and folds within itself like fresh dough on the baker’s table, yet somehow, I always remember. Does healing mean I release this lifelong friend? Do I have to be unrecognizable to be healed? Must I let my darlings go to become myself? To live is to grieve, I know.

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february 3rd, 2025

I’ve been thinking of old wounds and the ghosts of childish fingers picking at the edges.

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february 4th, 2025

Gently, gently, gently

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wine-caressed evenings with mosquitos, 2024

I take solace in knowing that this beautiful, contradicting, hopelessly hopeful mess I call myself will fade into memories, growing hazy with each generation until I am nothing yet again. I think that is where I find true freedom, in insignificance. How simple are my worries then, the shallow things, unknowing of their impending death. How precious you must be to me that in the face of meaningless endings, I wish only to fill my days with you.

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unanswered texts and guilty fingers, 2025

I’ve spent too much time screaming to be seen that at that moment, I didn’t notice I had stage fright. My skin crawls, and I feel like a hungry thief with his hands cuffed and crumbs on his lip, facing the fury of his village. Skin and scars bare, I want to scream, “Yes, I stole the bread, and so what?! This is what your carelessness has made of me. What your dismissive gaze has forced me into. You did this.” But your eyes are clear and oh so gentle. You did not make me, but you must understand, an anger as desperate as mine knows no aim

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my aunt came to visit, 2025

I love seeing women age. Love the blackening of their knuckles, and their spotting skin, and the pains of unsayable wounds biting their way through their backs and down their knees. All to disappear over a cup of warm spiced tea and uncontrollable giggling

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prayer, 20…

If I must chip away at myself, let it be for rebirth. Let it be for expansion. Let me outgrow this skin and become something otherworldly: something holy, a thing of divinity. Let me be free. Let me be air

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a day, in a month, 2025

The sun moves towards me one tile at a time, the petals on the rose race each other to ridgedness, and this hibiscus tea is just the right amount of sour and sweet. Yes, this is exactly where I must be.

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today, maybe, 2025

Gently, gently, gently