Late emotional writing

Posted this on my Tumblr a while ago and I figured I’d share it here — just ’cause.

I told him, “I just need someone to remove you from me” sweeping my fingers from the swell of pussy, over the navel, up along the length of my torso, to my throat. He looked tortured like the words cut welts into his skin. Me, splendidly triumphant for a moment or two. He recovered his composure as only a young man, smug and sure and deft in the ways of emotional disconnect can. The warmth in his eyes dim; embers flickering, fading, blinds closing in the dark. Me, scrambling with nubs of matches. The muggy Florida rain clanging on your car. Inside smelling like him and Jack Daniel’s from my cup. He take sips too as I rest my foot on the dashboard. He talks about how all he wants to do right now is kiss me, but he knows he shouldn’t. So he doesn’t. And we sit there and we talk. He has no filter. The asshole gene only minutely deactivated if it means he won’t have to see me cry which breaks his heart after he breaks my heart. And so on and so forth. Cyclical. Sisyphean.

Black girls like me are made of words and water.

All I want to do is talk sometimes. Conversational intimacy for air signs like us is magical. Our words enter each other, sit in the moist crevices of skin and joints of bones. You said you are afraid of being vulnerable, of succumbing to the unknown. You and I, we scare each other profoundly at times. I hear your voice in my head when I least expect it: that Trinidadian baritone pouring out of my subconscious, startling me away from what I am doing. You said I remind you of the best parts of home. Like a lot of guys, you want to be nurtured but can’t nurture anyone because you barely know how. Who am I to demand reciprocity? You gathered me in bunches once and laid me down to rest against you, wrapping your legs around and through mine like they were the most precious things right then. Your feet, large, sand papery and in need of some lotion (always). And the ways that we know each other: from breath to breath, the shape of our fears, laughter and anguish. I wanted to scream at the sky some days (and maybe I did).

You texted and I texted. I called and you called and we fell upon each other: sad and angry and hungry and disappointed, cowering under all these burdensome emotional energies. You said you came to help me move that Sunday because you gave me your word once and you couldn’t not come. And you made sure to leave me with a whisper, so cruel and unkind. You wanted to break me which tells me a lot about your fears. And still, I couldn’t hate you then.

And what is it we are meant to learn after all? I suppose it can come down to this: how do I tell someone that sometimes at night, when it’s all quiet in my head—all I want to do is crawl into the base of your throat and sit there, listening to you breathe. And how do you say to someone who is afraid of love and loving that that is exactly what you want to do with them? And what do you say when they tell you no? That they have no courage to love you. Now. Maybe ever.

Emotions aren’t rational. And there is a fissure in my heart caused by you. (Insert the saddest sigh ever.)

More to the point, “What kind of fuckery is this?” (Universe, yes, I am looking at you.)

And what can I say about the end? The bitter taste—betrayal, or was it something else? A lesson forgotten, soft skein slipping away because you had no grip? “Sorry”—but not really sorry, touching but not really touching. We have let the cosmos down or they have let us down. And between us grew spaces we could not fill, fruit fell before it was ripe and our spirits made promises we could not keep to each other.

Epiphany: He has no salve to rub into my raw, tender spots; I will have to do it myself. And I will.

hashtag SOE

i purposefully hadn’t bothered to comment on the trinidad and tobago government’s state of emergency all this time because i think it’s a load of crock and save for that, i really didn’t have anything constructive to employ in the conversation initially. who goes pulling states of emergencies all willy-nilly from out their backside like it’s nobody’s business? & sorry, but i also don’t trust the average local officer to not exploit the SOE — i feel like some might be gorging themselves on power, beating the pavement like giddy overlords drunk on the high of tossing alleged miscreants into the backs of pick-up trucks with no recourse. the whole thing just doesn’t sit well.

also, i’ve mused on crime & race before on here and though jack warner doth protest too much — images do tell a perspective, a slant, that is all. the whole discourse in parliament and outside is often full of fail. first of all, coming from the presupposition that black males in trinidad are posited, innately, as The Criminal — that in and of itself is a flickin’ problem! all the hand-wringing is coming from these problematic, patronising places from atop a moral high ground that makes some of us feel good about ourselves and meanwhile, root issues and inequity aren’t being solved. the kinds of insensitivities being spewed also makes me shiver to my core: “lock dem up” — “all ah dem” and things of that nature, when you don’t even know the hows and whys. bet your talk change when they come for you or someone you love though.

speaking of masculinity…

When I’m semi-lost in DC, looking for the right bus (a city that I don’t even know) while trying to do some sightseeing, I really don’t need a random man to say, “dang, it’s not that serious! Smile!” in a growling command like he’s more vex at me that anything else, a pitch that almost makes me jump out my skin ’cause I’m busy trying to sort out where the heck I am and most certainly, not smile.

Before that,  a bus driver told me I must have an attitude because I wasn’t a bundle of perkiness and presumably, coy smiles, when I boarded (and I could see him giving me The Eye). He assumed that I was one of  those females with my “defenses up”. On the bus! Yeah, it wasn’t even that serious. I just don’t do perkiness. That’s not me. So I humor him and once he heard my accent, I ended up hearing a tirade about ‘Trini women’ and how we are ‘trouble’ though ‘beautiful’—apparently he is allegedly familiar with “us” in some capacity. Cause all of us are all the same. (Then, he switched off his shift and passed me his number as he left. I kid thee not).

And anyway, who the hell commands someone to smile?

Why?

I was instantly triggered to think about Renina’s blog post where she talks about black women and street harrassment and this famous phenomenon:

From Friendly to Hostile to Bitch in 10 Seconds

“Hey, why so serious, honey? Give us a little smile.” My sense of humor, he didn’t know, was temporarily out of service, so of course I didn’t give him a little smile. But in not smiling, I had again violated the code, provoking another seizure of silent suffering that became verbal. As I passed the sleeve on the street, it hissed a word at me, with the edge of anger to it, with a sharp rebuke in it: “Bitch.”

This account describes a common pattern, in which the target’s failure to response results in escalation and a superficially friendly interaction is transformed into one that is transparently hostile.

So not feeling any of this. Not one bit.

in lieu of another random facebook status update…

just saw a chimp about to be released into “the wild” (that is to say an open sanctuary) for the first time in its life on nat geo—getting fed a large McDonald’s fries on the way out.

sigh.

what’s wrong with that picture?

yes, i watch a lot of national geographic. if anyone had noticed.

in case you [or someone you know] had been thinking about it…

so i was watching a new locked up abroad recently and from the get-go i’m thinking:

out, LESBIAN couple drug mules, one visibly butch, en route to JAMAICA—probably not a good idea.

[almost anywhere in the region actually] but especially there. i mean, ANY attempt at the airport nonchalance routine would just, like, fail. isn’t part of drug-mule-ism, not calling attention to one’s self? [i think]

you had to know it wasn’t going to end well.

besides staving off the aspirations of  any ill-prepared, drug mule-ees out there [thank me later], i’m going to try to get an interview with my friend “y” to blog about later—-she’s an american i met through school friends, who just moved to trinidad and tobago and i think with her personality, it might be fun to get some insight into how that process has been thus far, aspirations etc. exciting stuff huh?

[on the other hand, if it turns out to be all, “you trinis are sooo much fun!” type crap, then i will NOT be posting jack. just an idea. we’ll see how this all pans out]

random update: so in the end, i liked the interview and was grateful for “y’s” participation but i decided that i would rather use the info for something else at some other time. maybe.