cripchick's blog

i’ll scream it again & again—

no matter how eager, how radical, how cute you are

i do not exist for your fancy of freakery.

i could care less about feeding your taste for exotic flavors. i was not born to stroke your fascination of marginalized people.

no matter how much you are learning, no matter how much power/money/influence you carry, no matter how much you always know the right things to say,

my body is not for you to examine, conquer, or casually observe
as if the strands of my hair were nothing more than pages of a magazine

the creator did not craft these hands, lungs, feet of mine so you can feel good about yourself. my issues are not for you to solve.

who said you could analyze me? i am not a hobby, a project, a case study

nor will i ever be a pet to collect
in that menagerie of yours

instead i am harriet tubman using her disability to trick slavemasters, survey lands, and carve out paths to freedom
i am the spear waiting in datu lapu lapu’s right hand, standing with thousands ready to slice the colonizer’s head off of magellan’s body
i am the body casts frida kahlo painted on
i am the freedom song my joseon ancestors sung, the taegukis wrapped around their foreheads as they demanded an end to tyranny

no matter how quick i was to hand you this hard-earned self-determination in the past, know that from now on, you are being watched. vigilantly.

flip it, spit it out in a poem, brand it on the tip
of your tongue
do whatever you have to do
to remember

the more i sit in your meetings
participate in your organizations
wake up next to you
shake hands with you, make deals with you
love you

the more i become an expert

in your don’t knows

like

you don’t know how to sit in a circle
so you plant yourself
in the middle

you don’t know who you are
instead you imitate my hair my clothes my art my food
my tongue my skin color,
even my soap operas

and it must be that no one has ever taught you
how to use a library card
because you don’t know how clueless you look
expecting your earnesty
to be compensation for my time

by now i am an over-qualified over-educated expert in the field of your don’t knows
where’s my degree? my big house? my fancy research job?
i’ve earned it

let me guess
you don’t know..

shy shy shy. when you approached me that night at the show, i couldn’t believe it was you. a blooming cross-continental friendship. connected by this silly blog i keep. even more beautiful in person.

i forgot to mention i was shy, huh? call myself a radical woman of color feminist, a disability right activist, a youth organizer but maybe i am just a quiet girl who doesn’t know what to do with herself. maybe systems are the only way i know how to talk. maybe it’s like he says— blahzay blah, what does that even mean, girl?

the third day comes and we are sitting together quietly. over and over again i tell you that i can’t believe you are here. we spend a lot of time sitting like that. smiling. so much to take in. it’s okay though, all the secrets we carry have already been shared. all that is left are merely the details of our lives.

maybe all of these things i do aren’t really about movement-building. maybe this is the only way i know how to deal with the alienation, the loneliness, of being a person of color in white space. asian in black brown space. queer in homophobic straight space. a conservative army town girl who randomly transformed into a lone lefty. simply calling all of this “identity politics” does not do my life justice- it misses the quietness, the sadness that comes with living at the borderlands, the constant compromise, the necessity of an intersectional politic. i didn’t choose to be a bridgebuilder.

i grab every person i know that walks by so they can meet you. the way you speak is so beautiful. words connect and flow out of your mouth like poetry. you are so sharp and on point with your perspective. you understand isolation & the beauty of coming together more than any one i know.

lately, i can’t push myself to move, to be productive. haven’t left the house in weeks. feels like i’m stuck, overwhelmed with nothingness. realizing that this may happen every time this year because i have spent the last few summers in community— not community as the folks you live near but chosen family community— and when you have to say goodbye to that & face the realities of your life… nothing feels like “enough”. my family is amaziiiiing- they are the kind who will massage you to sleep when you are hurting and stay up all night rotating toasty blankets for you when you are sick. but still. once you get to be who you are, fully, it’s hard to go back to this hiding.

need more of you in my life. let’s see each other again soon. love you, sister.