My first tree memory is not my own. It is a story shared by my nana who, along with her younger siblings, was discovered to have taken a longer route home. They’d cut through some backwoods in order to avoid the freshest lynching site. One of the officers on “duty”…

YOUR FAVORITE MEAL was hash browns with tangy ketchup and it takes me three days to gather all the ingredients. I made the ketchup, making sure to add extra vinegar and dried chiles the way you liked before pureeing tomatoes from the garden. I wake early in the morning to…

These days, when I am unable to lift my body out of bed, or when light twists into something monstrous and my vision morphs into warning, I ask to borrow other senses. It isn’t that I fear my body, or that I ache to replace it with one more able…

The gentrification of these once sacred spaces is costing us our culture — There are many parts to this story and all of them are true. I dug my first grave at the age of six, in the backyard of a house that is no longer there. The house was behind a street that sucked the spirit out of alive Black boys. I’d…

I have always loved untying knots. Of pulling things apart so that they can form again. I love the excitement of it, the way it eases the bits of me that are in chaos. The way my shoulders relax and remember to breathe when untangling them. The smell of whatever…

And loss slaps me still. Makes me tongue tied and dizzy. Loss has altered my DNA. Our DNA. My body moves differently without my grandmama here. Our bodies move and function differently without our people “here”. My lungs pull in less air without my nana here. Without my papa here…

We are encouraged to mark folks’ relationship to us, to always identify in relationship to the other. Upon introductions, we say this is “my” partner, “my” child, “my” sibling. We are taught to lay claim to folks, to see them as possessions and extensions of ourselves, to ultimately uplift our…

There is a smooth point where your brain and heart break at the same time. Let’s call this place a fault line. A blood transfusion. An almost smile. A ravine. Shock. Storm. Stroke. Dementia. Portable oxygen tank. Fly in mouth. Lupus. Diabetes. Ketchup on eggs. Each time it happens, you…

In the cyber, social and physical world of Radical Black Politics, some of us claim (to be) spaces of transformation, embodiment, right relationship and deep connection. We talk about the worlds we build and the “work” we do. We talk. A lot. We’re amazing actors. We pretend to listen. We…