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Not Every Man Who Desires You Can Walk Beside You
Any man threatened by your independence, your intellect, your spirituality, your sensuality, or your refusal to play small is not for you. He may be fascinated by you. He may desire you. But he is not built to walk beside you. Men like that don’t want a woman; they want a dimmer switch. They want…
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Access Is Not a Right.
Remember earlier this year when folks were losing their ever-loving minds over a statue of a Black woman in New York because she was “fat”? This nonsense popped off not long after the president’s inauguration—right when certain people were feeling themselves a little too hard and decided trolling Black spaces online was a personality trait.…
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Not All Water Is Innocent
As a Chicagoan, I despise the Chicago River. To me, it’s a filthy cesspool with a long memory. I’m convinced there are still bodies down there from the Prohibition era, secrets wrapped in bones and silence. Meanwhile, people hop on boat tours every summer, skinning and grinning like the water didn’t just finish whispering threats.…
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It’s Okay to Cry
Forty-seven years ago, my mother had just gotten out of the hospital. She had been diagnosed with diabetes, and if my cousin Cleo hadn’t taken her in when she did, she would have slipped into a diabetic coma and died. That’s the part that still makes my chest tighten, even now. While she was hospitalized,…
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What Is Black?
“Black” is not a single thing. It’s a constellation. Black is a people, first—descendants of Africa scattered by history’s rough hands: trade winds, chains, migrations, love, survival. Not a monolith, not a hive mind. Nigerians, Haitians, Gullah Geechee, Afro-Brazilian, Black American, Somali, Jamaican—different tongues, foods, rhythms, gods, jokes. Same sun in the bones, different stories…
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Black Walnut Ice Cream
The weirdest things can unlock childhood memories. Yesterday, a friend mentioned how his mother used to eat black walnut ice cream, and suddenly a whole flood of memories came rushing back to me—uninvited, vivid, and sweet in that bittersweet way only the past knows how to be. Memory is funny like that. It doesn’t knock.…
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What cities do you want to visit? London, Edinburgh, Dublin, Paris, Rome, Athens, St. Petersburg, Lagos, Agra— I’ve read my way through these cities. Through their histories, their ruins and revolutions, their narrow streets and loud silences. Before my soul leaves this earth, I hope to see these places.
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A Slight Poem About The Cat
Now despite his age, this cat is still bad as hell. Sixteen years old and still jumping on counters. Still starting shit. And he knows how to create different meows he knows is going to make me mad as hell and pick up a broom. I swear to God he does this. So therefore despite…
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The Madonna/Whore Complex and Black Folks
The Madonna/Whore Complex is already a cracked mirror. When you angle it toward Black people, the glass doesn’t just crack—it shatters, because race rewires the whole thing. Quick grounding: the Madonna–Whore Complex is the psychological habit (popularized by Freud, refined by feminists) of splitting women into two moral bins. One is pure, nurturing, worthy of…
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The Social Construct of Masculinity
Masculinity is a social construct—and that doesn’t make it fake. It makes it designed, like money, borders, or the concept of “professionalism.” Real in its effects. Invented in its rules. Biology gives us bodies: hormones, muscle distribution, voices that drop or don’t. That’s the raw clay. Masculinity is what societies sculpt out of that clay…
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The Potty Mouth Granny 