I had a vision of you at my bedside
just checking on me?
I tried to wake but couldn't as you touched my gown
and gazed at my face.
Behind my closed eyelids
I felt your love, that you used to give sporadically.

Because you see in Black & White
And I see in Color.

I phoned you the next morning in the rain,
on my way to care for those dying.
The fight gone from your voice,
and too early to think of all the reasons not to speak with me,
you said I love you too.
I know and knew this to be true
that which keeps us apart is that you see
in Black & White and I see in Color.

I called to say I love you, miss you
here if you need me.
You're my responsibility too.
Although you acknowledge my utterances,
you were afraid to act on them.
Because we know
that you see in Black & White
and I see in Color.

We know this isn't about faith,
really it's because I've always seen in Color
and you in hues of grey.
It was nice to see you at my bed
even if a dream, but isn't it ironic?
Dreaming only in shades of Black & White
When the spectrum of the Highest
Al Khaliq created Color

Winter 2020

Where is my Lil Sister? I saw her walking to school. I hear her silent whispers.  " I'm gone too soon! "
Mom drove to the store, and she didnt return. We still wait like always, with desperate heartburn.

OUR INDIGENOUS WOMEN ARE MURDERED AND MISSING!
North America and O Canada, No one cares to listen
So to our tribal Matriarchs, we say "Do  nada*."

Auntie walked into the woods, she wanted to get an herb.
Now we go where she stood, she hasnt been seen or heard.
Who took them away and why? We mourn their disappearance.
We ask Mother Earth and Father Sky for our Intertribal quest prominence.

Until they leave no more, and we stomp grass again together,
Our Sacred feminine core, Turtle Island's own precious Flower.

finding our way back again. to what? this is a steep question. I am drawing this map of words, today we should speak of what is, the roots of words, this silence their soil, these words vehicle for the inexpressible.  Gaza strip, day 52, Jordan foreign ministery says Israel is busy with genocide. what else is trully new, for sure not pain, a fundamental law unrecognized by physics. the paradox of time that goes deeper into words when we feel them. the center cannot support itself exposed in cruel eyes. fall and rise of a time we lived in sometime like in a house with no windows. reality is and is not in the same spacetime simply unreachable, untraceable, incomprehensible. someone speaks in a low voice, another speaks more with the eyebrows. the door opens to the dance of life, and who is riding the dance. brave minds and collapsed bodies, I didn't want to be here today, she says. one feels disgusted by the expulsion from eden. I am looking for the secret garden where the mind of the body grows, but I don't know it. I am looking for a theory of absence. this is a story about the impossibility of story.  we have to listen and forget so that life goes on

I’ve always loved music. As a little girl, I could spend hours going through peoples CD collections, sampling them with my little battery-operated CD player. If you showed me a stack, rack or box of CDs, I was in heaven.

When I was 8 (2011), I got my first iPod for Christmas, an iPod Touch with 32GB of memory! The sticker said it was from Santa, but ‘Step’ got a package in the mail from Apple three weeks earlier, so I knew who it was really from. Upon opening it, I rushed upstairs to my older brother’s computer, plugged it in, carefully copied the username and password for the family iTunes account (from a wrinkled post-it note), and the world was never the same.

It never occurred to me that my parents could see all of my playlists and that they were automatically downloaded to their devices - like my break-up playlist, inspired by Antoine, my French-boy fifth grade crush. It didn’t work out because he didn’t have an email account and our recess times didn’t line up, but my playlist helped me through it.

I could burn playlists to CDs and exchange them with friends - or gift them to middle school boys who I hoped to amaze with my awesome musical tastes. There’s an art to the playlist that involves controlling pace and mood - every playlist was both a gift and a seduction.

Today we have Spotify with its unlimited streaming of every song ever made - on demand. Exchanging playlists, these days, is as easy as pressing "Share" and typing the first few letters of a friend’s or lover's username.

Like most of my girlfriends, I consider myself a playlist queen and as I continue to work this career path I’ve chosen, regardless of what's weighing me down, I know I can turn to my playlists to push me through. The band ‘The Narcissist Cookbook ’ assures me that my shocking honesty is fun with ‘Broken People.’ ‘K. Flay’ allows me to dance-out my rage with ‘Blood in the cut’ and ‘New Move’ motivates me to keep-at-it with ‘When did we stop.’

I’ve countless Spotify playlists: one for waking up, one for writing papers, one for doing problem sets, others for walking to class, doing the laundry, for nostalgic reflection, and for embracing the astounding depth of human pain.

Of course, as time passes, I find new favorite songs and older playlists are replaced with updated ones; but thanks to the archival nature of Spotify playlist collections, all my old lists remain intact. I’ve never deleted one. Search my archives and you’d see playlists from my freshie year, when I was new here, feeling insecure and alone, or from my sophomore year when I first fell in love.

This piece is a playlist love story, about how music reflects our identities and allows us to share ourselves through the vibes, melodies and beats that move us. I think playlists have a lot in common with poetry, which uses words, phrases, metaphors and imagery for similar purposes.

I have trekked scorching deserts,
leaving only temporary footprints,
upon trackless sands. Shallow etched
impressions soon erased by the wind.

Sailed upon deep ocean seas, swam
and surfed cobalt blue saline waves
skimming over colorful coral reefs.
Leaving nothing to mark my passage.

Hiked high mountain wilderness trails,
camped and slept under bright star lit
skies, decamping with not a single trace
of my transitory visit, or earthly presence.

In travel I learned meaningful values and
life lessons from people that lived in thatched
huts and never attended college or read a book.

My great grandchildren will not know me
except for some old photos and a few handed
down stories, I will not hold them, kiss their
tiny faces, or pass on anything I have learned,
that becomes my children's role. And that
will be my only lasting footprint on this earth.

This knowledge should be our goal in all
we do in our short lives. Like all living
creatures, we are but brief guest on this
earth. Destined to procreate and fade away.
While we are passing through, we should
endeavor to do as little harm as possible.

To love is to derail your path
put aside your own desires
throw yourself upon the pyre
to feed the fires that burn in someone else's heart
an act of madness from the very start
not a sacrifice, for that implies regret
yet we impale ourselves, to feel love's sting
on the reddest rose with the sharpest thorn
the sweetest pain which must be borne
a beautiful sabotage