After taking a bit of time away from freelance writing, I couldn’t be happier to return with this piece for @WomensHealthMag on queerness and sobriety. 🪩 https://t.co/KcPrabUJZB

As a queer person and a person that works in queer community with queer led organizations, as a person who loves my queer and trans friends and family, I am going to move over. Join me.

PSA: Just saw that a four month supply of @opill_otc (the over-the-counter, daily birth control pill that doesn't require a prescription) is currently on sale for $50 at Costco until 11/24!

now is the time to kill your ego and believe in your power. perhaps these sound antithetical and inherently oppositional to each other, but they are not. killing your ego requires you to abandon fear you cannot win. stepping into power requires Love, care, justice-centeredness.

biting into a hard shell taco in the clothes i slept in last night and the entire shell fractures into 34 pieces, releasing its innards.

eating an entire bag of wasabi peas, one at a time, at just fast enough a pace that the mouth and sinus burn is constant and makes the eyes water. not the snack mix, just the peas. irritating. uncomfortable. unstoppable.

this is going to be a thread of small moments i experience that help capture the kaleidoscopic feelings of this particular moment in being alive, on earth, as well all reckon with Big Grief in our own ways:

Community is not an abstraction. It’s not a grand holding hands moment with a thousand people; community is nurturing relationships and trust with a few, it’s showing up, and then doing that again and again for a few, & then a few many. It’s SHARING power, resources etc.

You’re going to see a lot of people talk about community and I want to remind you that community doesn’t mean big or large, it means people who are intentionally invested in your well-being. Your friend group of two or three people is also a community.

I went to bed and woke up to this. The only way out of this is to deal with the anti-Blackness, misogyny, and love of violence in this nation. In the meantime, donate to your local abortion fund and show up for your loved ones who have abortions.

and now the only thing to do is to entangle ourselves so deeply in community to keep each other safe. this is the part where we do it (all of it, resourcing, caregiving, protecting) for each other.

it felt so good to vote for this today. and then high five the organizer standing outside my polling place. tonight is heavy, but knowing how much we all believe in abortion access gives me heart.

While it was tough to learn that amendment 4 failed to pass, we know one thing is true: abortion is a human right. And the majority of Floridians agree with us. Now, TBAF’s work continues.

left the house for a long walk to shake the tension out of my cells. ran into someone in the neighborhood who needed help getting to our polling place. taking care of ourselves and we’re taking care of each other. sending presence, safety, comfort, and heart. flying hearts.

and then the streetcar rolled by and said *ding ding* "you can cross, Powerpuff Girls" out its loudspeaker.

No matter what you're going through, no matter the outcome of your pregnancy, you are worthy and deserving of care and compassion, NOT COPS AND CRIMINALIZATION. Patience, we care about you.

The only way to liberate abortion is through abolition. The fact that our nation criminalizes people for their pregnancy outcomes and for parenting in poverty is atrocious. We should be ashamed. When will we see a repro freedom platform that centers the realities of right now?

Abortion isn't about some of us; it's about all of us. When we, our families, peers, and neighbors have the ability to make autonomous decisions about whether or not we want to be pregnant or parent, we are able to show up in our relationships and our communities more whole.

Time is funny. I wrote this poem in 2021 and finally got around to submitting it places this year. A lot has recently changed in my life, but the relief of queerness has not.

Excited to have my first published poem in the October edition of The Bangalore Review. Spoiler alert, it's about being gay. Thanks for reading and sharing, loves. https://t.co/OrA9l8GiJH