February 20, 2025

I sit with words
That are not my own,
Let them settle,
Let them stretch,
Let them fill the space
I once rushed to claim
I once rushed to claim.

Silence is not absence;
It is presence unspoken,
A pause that makes room
For what I was too loud to hear once.

I listen, not to answer,
Not to shape the story in my mouth,
But to let it exist
Beyond my voice,
Beyond my need to understand it
On my terms.

Reflection is not comfort.
It is the slow work
Of undoing,
Of seeing where my presence
Has pressed too hard,

Where my words
Have stood in the way.
And so I listen.
And so I learn.
And So I hold my voice.

Before it breaks another

April 3, 2025

I study the worst of us
and then try to speak clearly.
Try to make it make sense.
Try to find the shape of it in sound.
Sometimes I tell myself that studying
sound offers a kind of distance—
that listening is gentler than seeing.
But sound gets under the skin.
It bypasses logic.
It lodges in the body.
And when the screams come, they echo
longer than any photograph stays.

Each day I wake up
and my mind returns, uninvited,
to a trauma that is rarely mine—
but still, it pulls me back
before I’m even fully conscious.
To what was done.
To what was silenced.
To what still echoes
through voices I was never meant to hear
but can no longer unheard.
Cruelty, hate, trauma—
it’s like a drug for me.
Not because I want to be near it.
Not because I crave its presence.
I don’t want to witness suffering.
I don’t want to repeat it.
I don’t want to initiate these violences—

God, no.
I yearn, above all, to stop them.
To name them before they spread. To listen until the silence cracks.
But I’ve become a permanent addict to the ache of trying.
And all I’m doing
is trying to sober the world.
I learn about violence
until I can’t forget it,
then try to fit it into a paragraph
most will stop reading halfway through.
Polish the sentence,
and still, they look away.
They say it’s too much.

Too dark.
As if history ever gave us
something else to work with.
I am tired.
Not the poetic kind.
Not tired like sleep can fix.
I am tired in my bones,
in the depths of my mind I can’t quiet.
Tired in a way that feels permanent.
Like I’ve crossed some line
I can’t come back from.
I have heard too much.
I know too much.

And I don’t know
how to unknown it
without undoing myself.
This isn’t burnout.
It’s erosion.
There is no way to study this
and come out clean,
pure,
whole.
But I didn’t enter it that way either.
I don’t know why I did.
but a part of me ached then too.
This is the cost of knowing.

And yet, I still listen.

So, here we are.
Democracy bartered.
Not stolen—but bought.
Votes were cast,
but money decided.
A choice made willingly,
funded by fear,
sealed with indifference.

Most of you gave it willingly.
Grasping hands, misguided hearts.
You chose power draped in cruelty, a rapist over a woman, prejudice over progress.
You called it patriotism.
You called it faith.

You saw the cracks.
You smelled the rot.
And you cheered as it spread, gleefully applauding our downfall, unbothered by the weight of the ruin.

But do you know
what this decay will bring?
The comforts you worship,
you crave, you lust—
which for most of you is a sing by your faith,
silly me—of course,
you can pick and choose which commands to follow and which to ignore.
The hate you unleashed
will turn back on you.
And if only you had tried
to see this nation as it is—
a tapestry, not a mirror,
a diversity, not a singularity—
then maybe we could have been saved.

MAGA hate is real.
It screams in the crowds,
it seethes in the flames you wave,
its violence burns, breaks, and devours.

This is no tragedy.
This is a failure exposed.
No one is coming—
No hero. No savior.
Especially not your messiah.

So, today, our nation divided.
Two points of view—
For some, a perverse celebration: for others, a mournful funeral.
But one thing is certain:
We will be a unified nation.
For what comes next
will stifle us all.