since early march, i have told friends that i have not “bounced back” yet. by “bounced back” i mean that this was not the first time i was in a relationship with someone who told me later on that they did not find my physical embodiment attractive. this is not my first time with someone who tried to make the attraction piece “work” because they appreciated my mind and spirit inside of this body, or the connection we had. in fact, this has been my whole life — a string of experiences where i am the friend people are secretly very emotionally intimate with, but the one who is not invited to parties, the friend the person is conflicted about loving, the date who knows the parents well, but not the person’s other friends. it has been an endless struggle to prove and remember worth in a culture that is relentless in its telling of the wrongness of our bodies. i have enough experience now that if i had known this is where she was, i would not have dated her. it’s fine not to like me or not want to date me, but an uncertainty of my body is non-negotiable.

my sadness is not so much loss for her — we barely knew each other. my heaviness is in being triggered to this place of undesirability. in this rampant culture of ableism, wanting myself is something i have fought for. coming back to this place has been very hard. feeling undesirable and angry at my body/reality was unexpected. i was loving my defiant, resilient body with such an intensity. it hasn’t just been being triggered by her that has been hard. i am starting to realize how hard it is to manage all the things a complex body like mine needs. i am learning to love a body that needs so much from me.

i still feel foolish. foolish for opening myself up like that, foolish for believing disabled girl her would know how to love disabled girl me. foolsih for thinking that intimacy was finding another young, queer, wheelchair using, asian girl with a white daddy, political person.

collecting myself has taken:
poetry
spending time with people with kin bodies, who love themselves
writing out on my iphone at 2 am all the ways i have survived (and wanted to stay alive)
saying no to friendships that i am not emotionally ready for
distance
distractions
love & being held in bed while antony and the johnsons play
talking to a therapist at a queer mental health center
affirmation from my community via snail-mail
coming to grips that this body and all the work it takes to live in it is always going to be my reality
learning how to have respect for my body even when i resent it
energy, so. much. energy.

some days i start to feel like the self i once knew, but so many things bring me back to this place. seeing a disability or queer analysis that has no recognition of what it means to live in a non-normative body is a trigger. seeing people i am in community with having non-wheelchair accessible event is a trigger. on a bad day, having a fight at home, a friend forgetting something important to me, or my sister not calling me back all take me to that place. i know it’s my own stuff. i know how i feel about myself has to come from inside.

and i can’t blame her for not loving me. it has always been my lone work.

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.

a transcript of the poem speak! radical women of color media justice collective read in the dark at the allied media conference opening. the theme of the conference was “we are ready now”:

Noemi: poetry? hmmm…do you want me to write poetry

( spoken through out auditorium by anybody and everybody we can get as
a murmur. after two lines are said, all say I speak I speak)

Elle:
with what
with whom
but how
who says
who said
how come
how long
which words
which way
my tone my tongue
my soul it lives
I speak

all: I SPEAK

Adele cracks silence to ask:

Adele: Why do you SPEAK?

Maegan:
hablo porque no me queda de otra
even though my tongue tangles spanglish mixed blood palabras
somehow they always translate into
love y lucha

Adele:
Speaking -my voice- is my faith

Faith that there are others like me
Faith that my voice has been heard
Faith that grows with me and never holds me back

I speak for protection
For love
For grounding
To remember I – we exist

Noemi:
feed writing, starve poetry

Little Light:
I speak because underneath my tongue and lips, my hips and hands,
behind my eyes and down my back is a skeleton: as mute and hard and
insistent as the bones of my ancestors. It demands that I give my
voice so they may speak.
They ask where the bones are buried, and remind me where my ghosts
are. They ask me from the ink in my marrow,
Who lies beneath your living feet as you walk?
and who has gone before while you go forward?
and who is silent when you are speaking?
and who is outside your Inside, and inside your guts?
and who do you belong to,
and who taught you beauty,
and on what do you stand, holding you steady from beneath, raising you high?
My skull clicks its teeth and asks me to listen. Through all my warm
and bloody flesh, where are the bones buried?
I speak
because underneath my eyes, my tongue and lips, my hips and hands, is
a skeleton:
as hard, and mute, and insistent as the bones of my ancestors, and the
bones in you.
It demands that I give my voice so the ghosts are heard, because
further under still, between my clutching ribs and fountain-pen spine,
I have a beating heart.
And so
I am ready.
Now.

cripchick:
revelations dance together in the caves of our mouths
webs of spit holding together poems not yet ready
tongue acting as transmitters
for every secret
you attempted to hide in the back of your throat
baby don’t you know?
…we are ready now.

Blackamazon:
One me many tongues
crossed tossed not mixed not muddled
run de
Shakespeare
iambic my creolese
hip hop overtures
Cr’est seulment pour une chose my voice
It is always better to speak.

Alexis:
brokenbeautifulbrownsweet
our half-baked edges
fused with coconut and sugarlust
hot filling my mouth with
yes
yes
yes
yes
possible
now

doesn’t matter if you’re disabled or gay or whatever, if you’re white and rich you can dream
people will call you a visionary
do what you do
in the end they will always respect you

but if you’re hustling to keep it together
if english is not your native tongue
if you don’t have the privilege of later,
if you are unbossed & you know that your name is your own
if you act like you deserve love
do what you do want to do, say what you want to say
be shut down, called crazy

sister you taught me that everything is a resource
when i say we are on the threshold of infinite potential
i mean i got you and i know you got me. i believe in your dreams
you shape me

voice shaky, don’t let me question the experiences that have created me
your truth is everything

–
i love you, think of you often