In December of 2020 I spent three weeks writing my comprehensive exams in the midst of preparing for a cross country move, navigating health challenges in my family, the ebb and flow of discomfort that guides one’s mental health journey, the loss of one left eyebrow, and reworking the boundaries of several relationships - all in tandem with COVID-19 shifting our lives and all that comes with navigating compounding oppressions.

It feels bizarre to reflect on nearly a decade long career in diversity, equity, and inclusion work. I find myself mulling over these terms because it feels like a betrayal of sorts to admit that these words are empty. I’ve long since learned to turn away from institutions and towards community when it comes to movement building and reimagining what a better world can look like- can feel like.

I remember how the soft click clack of my heels found its match in the cacophony of sounds coming from your computer when w first met. The click clacks of your long acrylic nails atop your keyboard sounded like each of my footsteps. I like to imagine we’ve been in sync from the very beginning, perhaps our whole lives.

I came to know you in the way I came to know myself. I’ve refused the title of mentor or role model- partly because I feel the heaviness of my own mess, but mostly because I have come to grow into the possibilities of my own proverbial shoes... filling them with confidence under your own tutelage.

Today I successfully cast my ballot for the 2020 US Presidential Election. I exercised my 𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕧𝕚𝕝𝕖𝕘𝕖 as a documented able-bodied Queer person of color who had the ability to take time during the workday to stand in line. I was able to make my way to the early voting poll in my own vehicle- avoiding long public transportation lines and additional risks of exposure to COVID-19. I waited and waited, feeling the heaviness of it all.

I have the 𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕧𝕚𝕝𝕖𝕘𝕖 to surpass many structural barriers that will keep undocumented, non-resident citizens, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated folks, transgender and gender non-conforming people, cash poor communities of color, and other marginalized groups away from the polls. Ranging from inaccessible polling stations and locations, discriminatory policies (like dismissing identification cards and inhumane documentation laws), and the long ongoing legacy of targeted voter suppression.

Beginnings are always hidden in endings. The transition from this tenuous summer into colder climes has me thinking about indulgence - what it means to find & feel rest. To refuse the urgency of time & lay together in bed, a tangle of limbs & lingering day dreams. Holding on to the echoes of my friends’ laughter on virtual calls and relishing the sparkle of Fenty lip gloss swatches on days when my comprehensive exam reading list feels far too long.

Do you remember the first time you saw yourself? The moment you could flit your gaze from a mirror see yourself reflected in a film? Or maybe it was a television show, print ad, or textbook?

I ask these questions of myself as salty tears leave tributaries to a deep seated pain within my chest. The steady flow of tears are familiar, they’ve kept me company since my first Halloween as Princess Jasmine and guide my hand with each pass of the straightening iron. I have been crying since I can remember, longing for a vision of myself that moves beyond the confines of a mirror pane.

These last few weeks/months have been difficult. It’s been hard to find joy and hold on to it when there have been more reasons to mourn & retreat inwards. Every day provides evidence of who we deem deserving of life, respect, compassion do not look like me or the communities I belong to. I’m constantly walking a tightrope of tension within my personal relationships with family and friends. .

In these last few weeks, months, days I haven’t been okay & I’m working on finding some semblance of what that looks like for me. Healing isn’t linear & neither is the journey of learning about what brings me comfort, soothes my conscience, how to be accountable to my self & communities, what it means to live a feminist life in this tenuous time, & what fuels the vibrancy of my imagination so that my dreams may be in technicolor. .

I begin at the wound. Mapping the threads of this corporeal coloniality requires dexterous movement as I trace the origins of the scar. I know this gnarled tissue comes from years of forced assimilation, having to check the "Other" box, silence, and subjugation. Learned through curriculum, familial tradition, social networks, and cultural rhythms - it is familiar, the way my body bends to appeal to Whiteness.

House Bound Haikus

In the times I feel lost, disconnected, and/or weary from carrying tension in my body, I try to remember the calm cadence of Alice Walker’s voice – “it is one of the most difficult things in this world to be a free woman…and the most fun”. Some may say that to be a free woman is a personal goal, an admirable lifelong aspiration, but to be a free woman also undergirds the professional career I envision for myself.

The world is 𝔻𝕒𝕟𝕘𝕖𝕣𝕠𝕦𝕤𝕝𝕪 𝕀𝕟 [ℂ𝕣𝕚𝕤𝕚𝕤] and many important life events like weddings, graduations, celebrating life at homegoings, religious gatherings, and 𝔹’𝔻𝔸𝕐[s] feel bittersweet. With no definitive end, it’s doubly hard to accept these conditions as normal.

As our semester went virtual, .@robinmaxile & I tried to stay grounded in our mental health and connected to our families/communities despite the distance. We failed at focusing on our research danced to our favorite #Beyoncé bops instead. We felt joy and confidence because [𝕎𝕖 𝔸𝕣𝕖]... 𝕊𝕒𝕤𝕙𝕒 𝔽𝕚𝕖𝕣𝕔𝕖 and academia isn’t the sum total of our lives.

After what feels like 𝟜 years of sheltering in place, 𝔹𝕖𝕪𝕠𝕟𝕔é was less a soundtrack for the quarantine and more so the heartbeat of our friendship. We sipped on 𝕃𝕖𝕞𝕠𝕟𝕒𝕕𝕖 - and spilled some sweet tea - and found comfort in our ℍΘ𝕄ΣℂΘ𝕄𝕀ℕ𝔾 to Georgia, where we nurtured 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕚𝕗𝕥 that is our deepening siblinghood.

In three hundred sixty five days, I completed a marathon. I lifted these legs to climb mountains of long ignored insecurities. Unsure of the terrain, my body moved with trepidation. Jagged stone and heavy regret marked my path to the distant top. Beneath my feet lay the shed skin of the woman I pretended to be. This year, I returned to myself.

With hands outstretched, I held a mirror and looked inwards. Gazing at my reflection, I saw the textured scars of commodification - the countless times I was consumed and made to feel shame for my fullness. I traced the genealogies of this mixed race body, ran fingers through 1B hair, and confronted an intergenerational erasure of Black diasporic roots. With mentors, I sutured a colonial wound and rubbed a salve of poetry and forgiveness across my chest.

This university is trying to kill me. Some days, I think it will. It's pull is so enticing - harm masked by invitations of representation, empty promises of inclusion delivered with a glistening offer of a seat at the table.

Its knife is sharp, the way it pierces my aspirations - cuts deep to the bone. As I flip through syllabi and assigned texts, I wonder, where am I ? Where will I find myself in text and across the conference table? My grades rely on a reiteration of my otherness. I author lit reviews and roadmaps that lead me back to a canon colonized by tongue and mind. Discussions with one another merely teach me that this Black body does not belong in this intellectual community. This institution wants me to shroud my loneliness with gratitude and offer ingratiating thanks for allowing me to be here.

I know shame well. As quotidian as the rise and fall of my breath, it inveigled itself into my reflection and I carried it in my step. To be a mixed-race child of the diaspora, a body conquered and policed by misogynoir and otherness, is to be student of shame. I know it and yet, the term cannot encompass how I feel about Syracuse University.

Official university communication provides an inaccurate account of the deeply white supremacist legacies that inform the recent racist, anti-black and anti- Semitic incidents, that we know of, on our campus. I say our campus, but is it? How can this inaccessible campus, built on stolen Onondaga land, sectioned off from the cash poor Black and Brown communities of this city, belong to any of us?

I brace my body in the short moments before it happens. Concentrating on the syncopation of heartbeat and breath, I remind my body to unfurl and relax. I wonder if you can see it – how your words cut the warmth of our discussion to sew my mouth shut. Do you see how this flippant colloquialism makes me retreat? The way eurocentrism shrouds around your analogy and buries me alongside my people's history.

Don’t drink the Kool-aid.

I return to the page with trepidation and chagrin. I’ve been away for far too long. Like missed phone calls from my parents while at college and canceled trips home on long weekends, this absence feels empty and heavy.

Yet this is a homecoming. The glide of the pen across this page is as familiar as my bed’s embrace. I run my fingertips across the page with a caress akin to my mother’s tenderness. I look upon this canvas with something deeper than apprehension – for when I write it down, it becomes real. Unavoidable. A part of me.

I was not well.

I envisioned something different- an oasis of sorts buried in the foothills of this seemingly impossible to climb (if you're able bodied) campus. I thought I'd find my people and excitedly imagined what it would finally feel like to ... be.

To "be" is less a Shakespearian dilemma and more a practice in performance. I was, and still am, tired of the mental gymnastics - of having to dance around topics, ignore painful -isms, and stifle growing disappointment when colleagues, peers, loved ones, or family dead named Caitlyn Jenner, argued against prison abolition, said [insert racist, homophobic, classist, ableist, xenophobic, or oppressive quip] in response to my profession or values, or celebrated the boundaries I put up with everyone else until those same limits applied to them.

It all begins with an idea.

Dear Jesse,

With my toes in the sand and the sun on my skin, I took your hands in mine and promised to never let go.

I ran my hands lovingly over the hem of my wedding dress and wondered if I'd find something as blue as your eyes.

I spent weeks rewriting my vows and learned each line like the lyrics to our favorite song.

We exchanged promises and side eyes and (disjointedly) swayed to #NewFreezer for our first dance.

If I were to write your biography, the title would be “Giiiiirl”. Give or take an “i” or two. It is the perfect moniker for what is sure to be a whirlwind of a story. I, myself, can piecemeal the juicy tidbits with a few memories of my own making. The search for good Malbec at hotel bars overlaps with stories of playing cards with your girlfriends down the block from your man. I remember frequent side eyes will debating kinks and other sexual proclivities, many shared calamari appetizers, and scrambling to put out enough chairs for one of our joint programs. Interwoven in these memories are soft exclamations of “Giiiiirl” before you wrap me in a hug and ask me how I am. It is now five years of friendship, but they feel like forever; so, I’m sure I could produce some strong pieces on the woman I’ve come to love. Truth be told, I think we’d need multiple volumes to encompass a life as rich as yours. How does one begin to pen the adventures of Beverly Guy-Sheftall? Describe the way your sense of style mirrors the uniqueness of your spirit, how your friendship is more like a sisterhood, or how hours spent gossiping end up feeling like just a few moments?