what happens to birds when there are no bees.
an anniversary of my travel diary from summer 2023 with my madre <3
ICELAND, AND SO WE BEGIN…
for a moment, there was just stillness. silence that went on for miles, mixed with turbulence from the wheels of red airplanes and the relief given to seated mothers when their children finally fell to slumber’s cliff.
we were in iceland. my poorly turquoise polished toes were setting ground on Iceland. these very bruised feet have only known the agile hills of San Francisco, the star signs in Los Angeles, the home where sometimes my heart is—New York—the home that no longer belongs to me—New Jersey, plus the other states of Nevada, and Florida, and Texas, and America, America, America. one country is all ive ever known. something about that swirls with naivety and narcissism to think that my place of birth is the only one with a breath of love and realism. thank God that he made more parts of the world.
we’re not in iceland for long. we await the red plane, my mother and i being the last to board. she’s beside me, and i capture this beautiful photo of her—oh you’d wish to see it. she’s dressed in her fur poncho, and her hair curls a bright red as the dusk of light blue and pale yellow gather around us, welcoming her and me into tomorrow. together we stood, trudging the carry ons into a plane that would take us into everywhere else, leaving the nothingness—the exhaustion of what would be our americanness behind. and i was glad to leave it, as those first steps were able to bring glee to all of the gloomiest parts of my body. —why don’t blaq people do this more often? it’s all i think. in my head, i can’t imagine going back into a life where i only know of one country. now i know one more.
LONDON
stansted, london. that’s where our connecting flight reaches. i’ve been calling it ‘foreign delaware.’ the color green to go on for choirs, grass and fields extending up until the ramada hotel. even though we’re surrounded by farmland and golf courses, there’s a food court in the shape of virginia’s wawa and it reminds me of the rest stops uncle paul would drive through. when jamorra and i were these babies, when all we knew were just three states on the side of the road. the weird thing about other countries is that their bathrooms are like life office cuticles and they have different outlet ports. yet, regardless, they still have Burger King.
to be here in foreign delaware is an ellipsis. there’s a rise and fall of emotions. i am in awe and i am in fear. eight hours away it is, and eight hours away i feel from everyone. my heart splits down into three sections, one for wherever i am, one for wherever ive been, and three for whoever’s waiting for me. i know i posted on apps, i know they know that i am gone—but will they miss me? will they feel an emptiness basking around wherever i was last? a pitiful thing to sink into bed as my mom falls victim to jet lag. i cozy up on the apps i haven’t posted on, thinking about this fear that somehow i’m known enough to be remembered, but also plain enough to be forgotten in due time.
she thinks i’m depressed. when we’re not stalking the grocery store part of the mall, or people watching and identifying accents, we’re watching BBC reports about 400m track runs. in ways, she’s probably not wrong. i just wouldn’t want to admit it. i’m swallowing four cantines because my bladder is running like a service car to the airport. i tell her all of my truths, even the ones that i tattooed behind the back of my knees so that i wouldn’t have to see them again. so much promiscuity, and lies, and infections, and bitter memories about people i’ll deny i’ve ever met. so much sadness and discomfort about people i would have wanted to stick around. much of what’s happened is life doing what it’s supposed to do, providing falls and handing you band-aids and all of it is God reminding me that my existence isn’t just gendered to what a man wants and what i want from a man who wants me.
it feels like an obnoxiously sad thing, an embarrassing thing that so much of my life has been tethered to how i’ve felt romantically, and thus i question if i even have any other feelings. do i know fear, do i know laughter, do i know ugliness and curiosity if it isn’t echoed by someone else’s voice/decision/perception::about the future/about our relationship/of how beautiful i am?
i used to love my snaggle tooth. and then i met someone who shared the same birthday as me. and he made me feel like my smile was flawed. he thought my style was ridiculous. he was there when his friend threw a drink on me after someone i just announced i loved went back to a life that would exist beyond me. and then i worked for six days consecutively, and i didn’t write, all i did was grieve these continuous railways of hurt and disappointment about one part of my life i was already hurt and disappointed in.
so big whoop, i’m in stansted, london. and my mom can see all of my agony and sorrow as if i did my makeup with ‘sorry for myself concealer and foundation.’ it’s her job to know the cub much more than the cub could know herself. it’s also her job to know when the cub must know herself more than she knows the cub. we’ve spent so much time away from each other that letting her know me more than i know myself feels like backwards thinking. so i'm fighting her and fighting her, because i’m embarrassed. we said we’d leave all of this stuff back in the states where misery prospers but trauma’s so stubborn that she comes storming over to us from baggage claim.
she can tell my focus is dreary. my feet are now in stansted but my mind wanders to how kalena’s preparation week for her first semester of senior year is going, and i’m thinking about how academy of art’s men’s soccer (or football depending on the country) team did at their first game of the season, not because i now prefer football over seeing the golden state warriors play but because there’s a person on the team who’s co-captaining that i’m familiar with. someone i like—know, know.
i keep telling myself there’s more to life than this part that i keep nourishing, but it’s hard. this is the only watch on my wrist that’s ever worked. or at least it’s the only element in my time frame that—even when it was broken—became fixed. the relationship i have with my dad doesn’t even mirror the ‘broken clocks are right twice a day’ metaphor anymore. it is just lost, it is just a ‘sold as is’ antique, remembered by what it used to be. sometimes when my mother and i eat burger king, we think about whether or not he knows he’s losing something. relationships, memories, and even the arguments. we wonder if he’s just somewhere cutting hair pretending that he’s only fathered one child. jamorra and i don't really know him by name anymore.
the relationship i have with myself fluctuates like pheromones. “i know that i am beautiful, i know that i am ugly,” i have said that before in a poem. again, it really wasn’t a poem about me, it was about someone else. i don’t really know how much beauty i carry if it isn’t paralleled by adjacent fondness. i get intensely awkward about pictures because now, instead of in my teen years, i am very aware of what i don’t look like. it should’ve hit me when i had scoliosis, it hit me a little when i had a shaved head but i had a comfort pillow to remind me of my beauty, which has now flattened and run its course. now i have to believe in me all by my lonesome. guess i’m too lazy to tell myself i’m beautiful—here, you do it. like, maybe this whole time i wasn’t even mature, i just displaced the pride from my parents and put it in the hands of the prejudice. this is the first thing i have ever written that says how i feel without the extra puzzles and soliloquies that i could hide behind so if i had enough courage to post my work online they wouldn’t know i caught the three-letter bladder issue and have a hard time thinking outside my box.
stansted, london—the first stop on our adventure list, has taken all of my facades. the same facade i stuck my nose up in the air to my mom in refute of not having, but it's there. it’s always been there. i’ve always hidden behind something. thank you foreign country—which i will say has great beans—for taking that from me. thank you, kind country.
i also wrote that in a poem. it was about being a black girl in america.
we grab an uber to some station in stansted, grabbing the train for central london. my mom and i argued a bit that morning over sausage and poached egg, because i refused to let her wash my jacket. i knew she’d be better at washing it, but when you’re stubborn, you’ve got a determination to see your point of view cross the finish line. —the two of us called a truce, letting our handshake speak to my inability of saying, “thank you for taking me. thank you for having me. thank you for loving me.”
in london, i heard camden is a pretty nice place too, a place with more punk and alternative markets that my glittery fingers can’t wait to get a hand on. when i’m not thinking about men or the words i write, the words i say, the words i pray, the words that i don’t say; i’m usually thinking about clothes. i forget that writing isn’t just this ‘i went through this, and i came out of it’ fleshed experience which is why it feels so pale to be like ‘i love clothes! that’s it, that’s the tweet’ but i’m glad i have more things to announce besides how i feel about myself.
my mom knows she passed down the fashion gene to me, but i think even she’s surprised by how much it travels inside of me. i pray it gives her a larger love for the same craft by knowing how much it burns for me. i pray that clothes will always be something i love even when i can’t always fit them. i pray my love will only grow bigger when clothes won’t be just so that i could wear them, but for other girls—the ones in the future that could be my daughters. i pray i can love them just as hard as my mom loves me. i know i only owe that to God, so i pray the love i have for Him triples so that i can pour it back into my future kin. —can i love with openness and understanding, and without stubbornness and the need to act ignorant of my feelings? can i become peace?
some idiot once said, “you can’t love anyone else until you love yourself.” well, that’s stupid because in the DuBose family, you love God first. and then you love macaroni and cheese. and then you love whatever isn’t broken. sometimes i don’t speak when my phone is rather quiet, and sometimes i’m an empire if it sings. sometimes i post a lot to hide a lot, and sometimes i post nothing at all because i feel nothing at all. so, i’m a strawberry. whoever said that statement about loving oneself isn’t an idiot, they were just too confident in preaching what humans aim to not do. i do agree that flowers would’ve grown much faster on my trees if i wrote myself love poems. everyone seems to be drinking alcohol during this summer, but my cup is filled with accountability. two shots of acceptance—can you see my eyes squinting from its burn? don’t forget it comes with one lime and some salt to rub those generational wounds. the same wounds i’d like to solve before i finish the scripts in my celtx account, and the wounds that should run through mitosis if i ever go into labor.
AMSTERDAM
we arrive in amsterdam on tuesday. it’s only four hours on the eurostar and i’m wondering if the netherlands will be just like that second episode of the third season of atlanta. you know, the one with all of the blackface. here, they make you pay some sort of toll for the bathroom (and stupid ketchup), then some white women will smirk at you from the window in sheer panties and garters, but every time i stop for a second and look around—i can’t think of anything bad to say. none of what i just said is delivered with judgment, but more so observation. in solidarity, i bought a red light district magnet to show my support for amsterdam’s freaknik, and it’ll sit right next to the baby picture on my fridge.
this place that we’re in, it’s beautiful, and it’s for my mom and eyes’ eyes only.
she can’t stop ordering fries at every destination she goes to, but i know she can see her future blossoming right before her very smile. we take pictures and i am reminded of what it’s like to be with a parent. these awkwardly rotated angles and zoom-ins on my double chin. at first, all i’m thinking is making sure i have photos for thirst trapping, but as the days go on, my interest in anything other than being happy feigns at a negative percentage. if all i have are these pictures that represent what i believe would make me happy, and i return to the states in a haze, without remembrance of anything that i saw, emptied of epiphanies about who i could be, then what i went for was to further my facades. i’d be wrecking the force of nature: the recovery road to humanness, the relinquishment of shame, and the new steps for health, forgiveness, and the j-word. this would be life with birds without any bees. surprisingly, there are so many in Amsterdam and they really like me.
amsterdam makes me want to go home and learn how to ride a bike. something i should’ve learned how to do a long time ago. i’ve realized that my biggest fear has never been raccoons or rollercoasters, seemingly it’s been the fear of doing anything i’d overthink as brave. that’s why so many of these poems sit in these files, that’s why my screenwriting treatment still lives in the corner of my computer, that’s why i don’t really like amusement parks, or bowling, or go-carting, sometimes karaoke, and anything that can make me look stupid. it’s taken twenty-two years to realize i might be the first person to hate fun on all accounts. let’s get hashtag-joliamour-hates-fun trending. —i’m realizing how timid i am. i have this nose thing where in new conversations, or moments of awkwardness i rub the right side of my nose. it’s to ease my nerves of talking, it’s to comfort the overwhelming nature of shared eye contact, and it’s to remove some sort of anguish about how others see me.
i don’t ever really do anything that requires me to be made fun of. i'm realizing how much of a sad experience that is. i think once i stopped dancing, it sort of put this strain on me to see how imperfect i really am. dance, something i did for umpteen years, was at first the focal point of my life, even if it was something that genuinely crept under my skin. i think i hated dance as much as i loved it. every time it barked: ‘you suck, you’re not good enough,’ little me just returned those criticisms with a middle finger and then practiced my sambas in the parking lot.
when i wasn’t on stage, when i wasn’t dancing, i was this tight-knit ball of yarn. eventually, i didn’t like the swings because it had the same queasy drop feeling that roller coasters had. i would be incredibly competitive when playing just dance, and i would vouch for my turn to be skipped when playing mario kart out of the fear of losing. in high school, my dance teacher was like an arnold palmer. half of her methods were decorative in us becoming better dancers, but the other half was to make the dancers feel insecure in ratio to studio babies. if you didn’t dance like you trained with abby lee miller, your spot was probably going to be in the back—in every dance—in every combination—in every show. we always had to perform in small groups, and ballet was used as the technique to force the girls who weren’t studio babies to feel bad about themselves for how low their battements were and how unarched their toes pointed. i was used to being watched—critiqued more than the average but in one eight count you could feel my presence run into your row.
years later, i forget these criticisms. i trade in blood on the scrapes of my knuckles for carpal tunnel and word limits, drowning out grows and glows from other girls with sock buns and footless tights for editor notes and comments about a film i’ll recommend you to see. perfectionism might be the epidemic we need to worry about more because my refusal to withdraw from only doing things i know how to do runs my bones dry. i only cook soup. i take the train. i do word puzzles. jog to half of the beach, cry in the other half, then reinvent myself on the journey back as if i didn’t recognize that my spirit was lost at sea.
amsterdam’s like that new iced mocha i tried before i left san francisco. it’s a salad with more lettuce than chicken, it’s health insurance, mouthwash, and prayer. on our third to final day, we exhale slowly while the pigeons eat at the ground for the residue of bread crumbs. we watch how others take in such a serene thursday, and how they walk without worry.
the bees always seem to know where i am. “don’t forget to breathe and take it all in.” —someone special told me that. amid all this beauty, my mother remembers the billboard she saw when we first arrived. it said ‘Jesus Loves You.’ God made the earth, and the letter e stands for Europe. i guess i can come back.
i’m filled with knots in my head about the souvenirs i want to bring back. one thing that has to come back is hospitality. the dutch people in amsterdam were the sweetest people i had ever met. they giggled with glee about pronouncing quarter right. —kwuaarter. corter. quarter. they snuck several two-milliliter bottles of lotion and perfumes into our bags and always told us how we were one of them. since everyone knows new amsterdam walked so our big apple could run.
when i would work at 2nd street, this rectangular shop in the hippie street of ‘francisco; i remember i might not have even offered a smile. i probably didn’t ask questions about where they were visiting from, didn’t look into the clothes they bought—just stuffed it into a bag and wished them a blessed day i wouldn’t have known anything about. it seems like as much as capitalism travels around the world, kindness doesn’t. america’s too busy being caught up in its mess all the time we can barely offer a “how are you?” and actually mean it. sometimes we make conversation for the insert of dialogue, and we’re not always listening. you’re telling me something true about you and i’m wondering if my lip liner smudged. i hope on the flight back home i’ll dream up a new constitution of generosity for those that inhabit these fifty states. and together, we’ll remember to call our moms once in a while and not be so quick to force our friends to a solution amidst their worries so we can return to our own scheduled wallowing.
how do we offer to check the plants of our neighbors more? how do we cook more meals for our parents and give our relatives home depot gift cards? how do we boldly admit that we love people? how do we love people beyond the cinderella principles we made for them? how do we stand in such passion, bathed in emotion instead of asking to return those feelings to sender when the journey becomes too narrow to finish? humans are so lost and comically just as found. it’s easier to see that now. so thumbs up to you, amsterdam. here’s a thirty euro coupon to buy yourself a titty mug and some feelings.
GERMANY
wo gibt es second-hand läden? say it three times, and maybe you’ll become german. after an eleven-hour bus ride—on the flixbus of all buses—we’ve made it to münchen. in contrast to amsterdam, not everyone shares the same interest in English. for miles, tongues collide and my mother and i are both skeptical about ordering whopper juniors again because of the puzzled language barrier roping between us and the cashier. hand gestures and quick nods have worked but the frozen eye contact sours me with nerves as if i should write an email to my high school for not providing a language course as the side of fries to world history. since obviously, it’s been so regurgitated to us for years. u.s. soldiers were throwing down treats from airplanes to gain an edge over Russia instead of learning how to say “thank you” in German. what fucking idiots.
germany has my mother and i running around the vintage markets like two small children. as much as it’s nice to pick up a grail, it’s making me happier to know she’ll have things to take home too. especially as my money begins to fade out, i just hope to find the things that’ll make my friends smile once i return.
after eating a bratwurst—a hot dog i order from a nice lady who only knows how to say ketchup in english—the clouds become an angry gray color, changing the course of our weekend into a festival of umbrellas and damp clothes. we spend our monday walking around marienplatz for all things vintage and come up short time and time…and time again.
my mother tells me in the morning that that’s where we made our mistake. putting the clothes above God. when i begin to think, memories appear of the many firsts i’ve been drawn to. first kisses and cop cars. a contact pinned in my iphone 6 at the time for someone named stiffy. with multiple letter f’s, which now stand for failure, but also freedom. we outgrew each other the way children outgrow the taste for skittles, and as i look back i can see how fine that is now but when i was that age (sixteen, hence the iphone 6) it was as if i forgot the idea of me ever being alone again. like, i refused the idea of having to go places by myself, or make playlists and listen to music for my own sake, write letters, and watch films for the basic understanding of enjoyment. a song i liked had to be translated to a song someone else and i liked. a place i loved to eat must become bridged with a person i like/love/fear/desire and we must share a noodle of spaghetti because i have been both the lady and the tramp.
after the first ‘boyfriend,’ i went looking for a second fix. and it fumbled me down these dark hallways into these heartbreaks i only choose to share some portions of. second fix turned into another summer fling at the end of my senior year, and it felt like the beginning of a strong relationship with co-dependency. this one told me he loved me in a barnes and nobles three months into somewhat of a relationship and then also proposed that before i move to san francisco we should cut the wool of our rope. all a young girl wants to hear is “i love you.” i think those three words make us chase for years. wrinkles form early for young girls stepping in front of traffic for unrequited almosts.
for me, those three words were just as strong as wedding vowels, and at seventeen years old, i wouldn’t be able to fathom that love could have an abyss deep enough for you to get lost in, so much to the point that you’d prefer to rise to the top. at seventeen, someone is telling me:
“i love you, i have decided that my heart beats for you differently and much larger than i could reckon—but i don’t choose to go to war for these feelings.”
of course now that L-word looks a bit lop-sided, but how do we ever really know? whoever said “everything’s fair in love and war” was another idiot with a pen and a dream. he was an idiot because not all love requires fatal war. sometimes all it requires is someone who’s willing to bet everything on you. and if someone loved you, why would they send your heart to probable death? is it better to live or die for someone? why would we ask for so much?
in germany, my mom and i bump heads a few times. she buys thai food that tastes like the word “sure” and my shrug of the shoulder attitude persuades her that i’ll finish the leftovers the day after. the next day shows up and we see that the container is smiley side up, the juice of the noodles leaking out from a blood wound. we fight about how we wasted her money and i don’t like having the finger pointed at me. it sends my jaw forward having to take accountability i didn’t ask for.
i lay in her bed as she spoke of nothing originally to me. like i am waiting for her to finish talking so i can daydream about how i plan to get as far away from her. i regret all of the daydreams i have that make me believe that being far away from her makes me feel at ease. knowing that she has breath in her body gives me something to shout about. i know that if i didn’t love anyone else in this world, i would love my mother. i say something stupid and fire ignites in her eyes. she sends me away and i’m relieved, leaving the room to sit on the couch on the reception floor. i pretend i’m much happier eating a very small snicker’s bar and watching adam sandler’s, you’re so not invited to my bat-mitzvah. she whatsapp’s me, the motherhood inside of her blocking out the previous rage. we realize none of what we argue about is memorable. the love that elopes our mother-and-daughter relationship bridges us together once more, and with hugs exchanged and coined laughter, we’re ready to move on to Switzerland.
seems like germany wasn’t for the outer picture—there isn’t enough tourism to outshine the soul-searching done. danke, i guess.
SWITZERLAND
a migraine kisses me with passion on our journey to zürich. my eyelid weeps by the explosive pain in my temple and thankfully an ibuprofen and fried chicken from a middle eastern Spanish fusion taco joint suffices. we’ve been on this christopher nolan journey—probably not because we wanted to but because international netflix barely has anything besides his films. we watch the dark knight series out of order and it’s still a shame that heath could not recover from that kind of darkness. i wonder if my dad will ever recover from that plague of darkness. i can see it stops him from contacting me. what a weird statistic it feels to act out knowing i’m a black girl without a father. not enough fifteen-minute calls and cash-app money can really make up for the loss of a halved parent. anyway, we carry on to watch films.
i take my braids out later that night. for the first half of the trip, i kept my hair in these braids i saw on pinterest because of my lack of desire to spend eight to eleven hours braiding my hair with kanekalon. the braids end up cute and are easy for me to do but the laxxed protective style fades out immediately as we arrive. by the time we leave amsterdam, the roots of my hair have sprouted, new growth gardening at my scalp which leaves the braids looking like they’re on a back order to change into dreads. working at 2nd street keeps me superficial and constantly focused on my appearance as all of us coworkers only know how to talk about movies and clothes. it’s a challenge to not feel ready for a fit-pic as i walk these new streets in cole haan sandals. as my curls come out to play, the confidence that i know returns like it’s in season but it’s mixed with contentment that my beauty as a whole—my jar of humanness—is incomparable to what i look like. a different type of beautiful sprouts from the inside and it forms itself when i lay on the sidewalk of zürich’s canal and let the water’s current high five my hand. even though our stay in switzerland is the shortest out of all, it has become my favorite. it holds the ashes of my ego death. and not in an ultra hippie way, but more as a an embolden bullet-proof jacket of my Christ faith. on our last legs of germany, my mother and i shout to the roof tops in Hallelujah. it changes something inside of her. God changes something inside of me in switzerland. from the moment our flixbus sets onto the ferry and we cross the ocean, a cold breeze drafts over my face in thanksgiving. i relinquish everything that does me harm. lust. gossip. disappointment. grief. trauma. i leave it on the water and let it fall to the bottom without mercy.
the moment the water and i come into contact once more—on the last day, it’s a positive reunion and a touch of encouragement. i no longer wonder what’s going on back in san francisco. i don’t care about the journal articles and the comparisons a prior version of myself would want to make about girls the same age as me with much more outlandish lifestyles. i remember that not everyone gets to see how blue this water looks. and i breathe it in and absorb it like vitamins. i pack these new emotions: acceptance. curiosity. imperfection. wonder. peace. and more peace. and some more peace after that. into my suitcase it goes. i do not know the joli i left as. only the one who now knows how to walk on the moon. look at God—do you see Him as i can? open your eyes a bit wider and you might find the world. be not entangled into the yolk of bondage. casting down imaginations and every high thing that exaltheth against the knowledge of God. and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. i repeat that to myself when the waterworks of yesteryear try to play their haunting game.
even though the water’s blue, switzerland lacks of workers. at the easyhotel, we check ourselves in, an eeriness drafting along the hallways from the lack of music or people. on the morning after’s, we become relieved to know that at least the cleaning ladies still exist. we badger them for extra towels and use hand gestures to further confuse them.
we walk away from switzerland in the middle of the night, catching an uber back to the bus station. i am able to see my mother as more than just my mother. as we look around, noticing the lack of female presence, the bus station being very much occupied by tall, dark, and certainly not handsomes, we remember the double consciousness of being a woman. a tale as long as time that doesn’t just exist in the americas. a woman is a woman everywhere, and the threat of her existence is just as prominent across the coast.
STN — BWI
on the last legs of my trip, my mom and i make it back to london. instead of central london, we stay in the ragged parts of camden. a place i wanted to be because of my interest in the punk scene. not that i know much about it, but i watched the sex pistols mini-series last summer and had a heart attack over sid vicious and the seditionaries line—you should remember this by now, i spoke of camden earlier—and felt like it had to be the coolest thing ever. it’s definitely the real deal here. pictures of mug shots and rockers on the side of the road; the commitment to this lifestyle in ways is something that doesn’t draw me near but more so makes me walk backward. it feels sobering to be with my mother. for the last couple of months, i’ve been in this haze. for years, i’ve been in this romantic haze, but in the last half of the year i was just drifting through life. i was holding on to a part of me that died in my past relationship and hoped that it would still work just as effectively.
i didn’t get to write as much in zurich and paris, i think it’s because i spent more time doing than thinking. in this month i can see that the trip wasn’t just to see, it was to to feel. to hear, and remember, and to think on all of what i’ve become to get here. a sentence structure like that comes off with appreciation, but i learn that the self i boarded to reykjavik and stansted in was a dead self. a self that was so focused on other people and what they had to offer and how they perceived me. i want to write more but I just spent the last two hours writing my boyfriend timeline and that was a doozy so I’m really tired (this was of course cut out). in the beginning I began to think this was something i’d publish, but now i wonder what and who i’m really writing this for. i don’t really know who i’ll let read it, but i’m glad it’ll be me someday, somewhere far down the line to remember this. to remember a Joli, a child of God that finally lived up to what she was supposed to be. not someone’s girlfriend, not a celebrity, or the coolest homegirl to ever homegirl, but just a Joli. Maybe a JoliAmour on some occasions too.
SEPTEMBER 8TH, 2023
i am in a bunk bed. i just turned twenty two. deciding not to spend the last ten minutes dancing. taking in peace. a slow fire of joy.