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They get me!

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You Owe Yourself the Love You So Freely Give to Others

Let’s be honest—when was the last time you showed up for yourself the way you show up for everyone else? You’re the one who answers the late-night calls, who remembers birthdays without a Facebook reminder, who doesn’t let someone sit in their sadness alone. You pour yourself out, drop by drop, making sure that the people you love never feel depleted. But what about you?

You owe yourself the love you so freely give to others.

Think about that. Really think about it.

You have convinced yourself that love is something you give, not something you deserve. You’ve made a habit of prioritizing other people’s feelings while ignoring your own. You rationalize it—“They need me. They’re going through a lot. I’ll be okay.” But when does that kindness circle back to you? When do you become the person you nurture? When do you decide that your own well-being is not something to be sacrificed, but something to be cherished?

This isn’t about being selfish; it’s about being fair. You would never let a friend run themselves into the ground the way you do. You would never allow someone you love to burn out, to settle for crumbs, to believe they are only valuable when they are useful. So why do you allow it for yourself?

Love isn’t just an action you offer—it’s something you *deserve*. Imagine what would happen if you spoke to yourself the way you speak to others. If you gave yourself patience, grace, warmth. If you forgave yourself for your mistakes instead of carrying them like bricks on your back. If you stopped waiting for someone else to give you the permission to be cared for.

You can’t run on empty forever. You can’t expect to be whole while constantly breaking off pieces of yourself for others. It’s time to turn some of that love inward, to recognize that your own heart deserves care, too.

Because at the end of the day, the one person who will always be with you is you. And if you wouldn’t let someone else go unloved, you sure as hell shouldn’t let yourself.

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THE SPACE BETWEEN MY LEGS

To me, it was just a body part, a small piece of the whole that made me. Nothing more, nothing less. Just me.

Then a man invaded it, turned flesh into wound, turned silent spaces into screaming ones. My body became a crime scene where evidence was left but justice was never found.

Then a woman loved it, and it became a site of bone-melting pleasure. There were undertones of justice In how she made me whole again. Her touch was like rain after a drought. Her hands built havens of healing where all else had failed. In her eyes, I found myself afresh, Less broken, more beautiful.

Then society claimed it, and deemed it the property of a faceless man That I had never met - any man, never a woman. They wrote rules about who could touch my body, who could love it, who could name it. They called it tradition. I called it theft.

Then the government put a bounty on it; A decade in prison if a woman and I, Ever made it a site of love again. They put years of incarceration between her touch and my skin.

This place between my legs; it was never just a body part. It was a battlefield, sanctuary, courtroom, prison. But through it all, it remained what it always was: Mine. This body, this love, this choice. Always mine.

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Custodian of my wounds

Let me share a thought that's been forming in my mind today. Hope it makes as much sense here as it does in my head.

I've been contemplating how we build homes in our minds for memories we'd rather forget. Like an old house with rooms we never enter but still maintain - dusting the furniture, keeping the windows intact, maybe even repainting the walls occasionally. Why do we do this? Perhaps because even painful memories are pieces of our architecture, and letting them crumble completely feels like losing a part of ourselves, even if it's a part we'd rather not acknowledge.

It's interesting how we become the custodians of our own wounds, isn't it? Not necessarily because we want to preserve the pain, but because these spaces hold something more than just hurt - they hold the story of how we survived it. Each crack in the wall tells of a time we chose to continue, each broken window speaks of a moment we let fresh air in despite the draft.

And yet, I wonder about the cost of this maintenance. How much energy do we spend keeping these rooms intact when we could be building new spaces? But then again, maybe these old rooms serve a purpose - like the damaged building in the neighborhood that becomes a landmark, helping others navigate their own landscapes of healing.

What do you think about this relationship we have with our difficult memories?

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It is fascinating how we measure distance, isn't it? Not the physical kind that stretches between points on a map, but the kind that exists between who we are and who others believe us to be. It's fascinating how this gap can be vast even when standing face to face with someone, or surprisingly small across continents with a stranger who truly sees you.

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Dear Young One (From Time)

Dear young lady,

who fears the march of days, I have watched humanity since its earliest ways. You worry that forty brings invisible chains, as if age is a shrinking box and you’re stuck inside, looted of spaces in which you’re fully welcome and free, and packed in with expectations like the clutter in a forgotten attic.

But let me tell you what I have seen From my perch across eons, what aging can mean: Your precious decades, which seem so long, Are mere breaths in Earth's four-billion-year song.

See, They want to fold you into a small paper boat, set you sailing toward the quiet shore where women are supposed to disappear. But what's fifty years to the ancient seas? What's forty springs to the olden skies?

Your mother's mother's mother walked out of Pangea carrying tomorrow in her eyes. Three hundred thousand years of women are standing behind you now, their hands under your shoulders, their voices in your chest.

So, when they tell you forty is sunset, and fifty is night, laugh like the thunder borrows from you its might. Because the mountain remembers being fire, And the mountain knows it will be sand, Yet its majesty never bows to time.

With love, Time

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Reclaiming authenticity from the claws of desire

From the moment they trace their presence in the womb, girls are molded into something others can pick from a shelf. Their worth is measured by how tightly they can cinch a waist, how carefully they can smile, how many children they might have, how much labor they could give...how much could be taken from them. They grow up learning to draw lines on the ground, debating when it feels right to step across them. The lesson is clear - being chosen is a prize, however hollow the trophy.

We prepare ourselves for inspections, honing our edges to fit neat boxes crafted by hands that refuse to touch our humanity, and this bleeds into our veins, this notion that assimilation equals safety; that bending ourselves into pretzel shapes will keep us from being discarded. They tell us it is freedom to be desired, ribboned and sold like the sweetest of fruits.

Even as our oppression continues to stink, we are expected to perfume our skin with hopes that someone will see us as enough, all while hiding the truth of any imperfection beneath layers of expectation. We learn to apologize for taking up space, for wanting more, for daring to exist outside the limits set for us by those who claim to have our best interests at heart. Each choice feels tied to an invisible chain, shimmered over with false glitter.

We build lives around their approval like our roots are not strong enough to hold anything we would rather become.

Some days, I wonder. What if we insisted on being more than mere decor, more than desirable objects? What if we combusted into our own freedom, burning down the structures built to extract us as a resource? What if we decide that we no longer will we mold ourselves for availability? That we are not resources; we are living, breathing storms, gentle or wild?

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Between the hell and high water of decision paralysis

I have a choice to make.

So, here I stand, at the edge of a decision that feels too big, and my hands too insufficient. A choice between clawing through the pain of growth or sinking into the soft cushion of sameness. One path is lit by the grit of progress; the other is lined with the the lies of lazy comfort. I can feel the roughness of the rock against my skin, and it sends shivers up my spine. I breathe in the promise of change but taste the bitterness of what I might leave behind.

It’s funny how the choices we make mold the shape of our lives. I could stay safe in my cocoon, the softness of complacency wrapping around me like a warm blanket. But what comes next? Will I look back and regret the moments I didn’t seize, the chances left untouched, simply because I feared the burn of discomfort? Sometimes I think I can almost hear the ticking of opportunities slipping through my fingers.

I need to choose.

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Wrapped in the skin of a ghost

I’m a candle in a glass jar, Yesterday’s bride in a dress that fits like a lie. As my friends celebrate their milestones, Engagements, house warmings, countdowns to kids, I’m learning to comment with a smile, My heart wrapped in the skin of a ghost.

I walk next to her, the woman I'd rather be. She is a shadow with arms wide enough to hold me. Together, we stroll past expectations and the sighs of “when’s your turn?” We swallow back the answers that could drown us both, Because you don't say gay - not in this land. I keep my head high as she whispers, “We have places to be, And they’re not on anyone’s calendar.”

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Breaking the Sky

There's a person living inside me who wants to shout from the rooftops what love feels like when it catches your breath, and how chilling it feels when it breaks into song that you must choke before it reaches your lips. She wonders if her voice could crack the sky, and if this city could hold her truth without breaking.

There’s a softness wrapped in dreaming, a pulse of courage waiting for day light— can you hear it, maybe? or is it all in my head again, the hope that the doors have opened, and the closet has set me free from the visceral fear that curls around the heart.

See, the air feels lighter when I think of freedom, like letting go of a balloon, watching it rise above the noise, seeing it survive away from the danger.

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Voices in the Silence

another name, another empty place at the table, another mother screaming into the night, her voice lost in a sea of ignorance.

they took him, again, the unarmed, the young, a promise made to return, shattered like glass on pavement, children in the streets asking why.

we scroll through our feeds, thumbs heavy with grief, each post a reminder that safety is a luxury now, that love cannot shield us from loss.

and yet, we live— defiant in our tenderness, holding on a little tighter, hoping for a sunrise, knowing that tomorrow is not promised.

in this silence, we gather, a chorus of hearts that refuse to break, lighting candles, sharing stories— because he was here, once, until he wasn’t.

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The Sound of Doors

We wake up to the sound of doors crashing, ICE in the neighborhood again, like wolves hunting, picking people out of their lives like rotten fruit. Children gripping their mothers’ hands so tight, it’s as if they could keep them safe just by holding on.

This is not a nightmare, but a cold morning becoming steel, flashing lights that know no mercy. Our histories are packed into bags— memories and dreams, love letters to homes that might not even exist anymore, and all we can do is scream in the dark, call their names, and pray they come home.

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The Quiet Rebels - Inaugration

i remember watching the screen flicker, the world held its breath in a crowded room, each eye a mirror of disbelief. the flags waved like palms, still, we felt the weight of thunder beneath the glinting surface of patriotism; a bone-deep shiver told us what we knew.

we sat on a crumbling couch, our spirits draped in denim and defiance, scrolling through feeds, seeing pixels of false promises, hollow chants echoing like ghosts in a land that forgot how to dream.

we wrote poems in the margins of fear, on pages stained with the ink of rage, as the sun rose over a nation that taught us to build walls, while we longed to carve doorways into hearts that still want to love.

he stood there, a king on a throne made of all our uncertainty, and we, the quiet rebels, the poets with our fingers poised, ready to rewrite the narrative— to paint the truth in colors that can’t be muted, to shout our histories until they drown out the noise of a world that doesn’t recognize our right to exist, to thrive, to sing.

we are not afraid. we are the ink stains, the whispers, the wild and the restless— and we’ll find a way to rise. because hope is louder than the silence of a crowd.

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CHASING YOUTH

We chase the fleeting echo of our youth, In serums, creams, in scalpels skin-deep, As we suspend the past under The sculptor’s blade. The wisdom gathered is expelled, discarded, Off of our skin because time is a shame. Each wrinkle sits where a minute once passed, On the way to answer your heart’s yearning For a long life, just a little more time. Did you not pray, that the death’s shadow Remains a stranger at your door?! If you are aging, it is because heaven said yes. You are spun of silver, so refined like gold. Time is not a curse Even when it makes a home on your face. It is a storage of the memories that you are, Of loves embraced, and tears that met your eyes. Let go of the chase, the yearning to rewind. Though time may steal your youth It gifts you a chance.

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